Solitude and Refuge
by circumbendibustible
Summary: Sherlock destroyed more than himself when he fell. John has to escape his demons. Burdened by solitude, can either find refuge?


**Disclaimer: When I was little I played Barbies. Now it's Kens.**

**I thank the amazing band Elbow for providing the song 'Mirrorball' from which I quote. They have given me such beauty.**

**This is my first fan fiction, and I'd love reviews. Cheers, C**

* * *

His mind is one long howl. Sherlock's face, waxen, icon-pale and haloed by spreading tendrils of blood, is imprinted against John's eyelids every time he closes them. His cold hand retains the touch of Sherlock's still warm wrist, but the absence of a pulse, and the unbonedness of the fingers, always before so long and sinewy and precise in their movements, palsies John's own hands. He still feels faint, and shock swells and ebbs with his every new realisation of his friend's death. Why did he do it? Why make that choice? Of course, they've found Moriarty on the roof from which Sherlock had freefallen. John's inner eye still follows that dive, graceful, determined, and somehow an embrace. The police have been saying that Sherlock shot Richard Brook as the culmination of his extreme paranoia about the man, and then killed himself – murder/suicide says Anderson with a smug smirk at John - but Lestrade, finally, has his doubts.

"Don't worry, John," he says, his eyes deeply sympathetic as he takes in the orange blanket draped around Watson's shoulders, the hunched posture and the dreadful, agonised eyes. "We'll sort it out."

Mrs Hudson seems to have turned into a little, old lady. She holds out to John a mug of hot, sweet tea and rests one shaking hand on his shoulder. She stares at Lestrade with furious accusation, and he knows that nothing he can say will make anything better. She turns her back on Lestrade as he leaves the room, and he finds himself almost creeping down the stairs, guiltily, like a thief.

And he feels like a criminal. He's known in his entrails that Holmes was innocent of the accusations levelled at him by his colleagues, but he's gone along with them, trusting that he'd have time to find out the truth, one way or the other. But time has run out, for Sherlock, and for him, and as he recalls the many times Sherlock has helped him in various cases (to be honest, solved those cases for him), he _knows_ the man was as sane as any one he's ever met. And if Sherlock was sane, then Richard Brook wasn't what he said he was.

John ignores the cup of tea in Mrs Hudson's shaking hand, brushes her other hand, violently, from his shoulder and pushes her silently away, the teacup falling to the floor. She puts a shaking hand in front of her mouth and falters away, unable to look at the devastation of a man she loves.

As the nightmare day turns to hag-ridden night, John sits on, remembering an Arabian Night's worth of Sherlock's presence in the flat – Sherlock throwing himself petulantly onto the couch; standing bloodied, armed with a harpoon; in motor-mouth mode as he interrogates Henry Knight; playing violin against a rainswept window - smiling at him with such enjoyment, his intelligence a brilliant beacon in what had been such greyness for John, who bends his head to his knees, his hands clutching each other close to his heart, his guts. Again and again he retches, drily, unable to weep.

* * *

Sherlock wakes on a stainless steel table, Molly's face swimming in and out of focus before his wandering eyes. His head hurts and his back is one big bruise. His mouth is dry, and he tries to speak; Molly holds his head up, one arm supporting his neck, and holds a straw to his mouth. He sucks gratefully, all sensation at present, no thought behind his reactions. He turns his head away as he finishes drinking, and the movement registers in his mind. So I'm not paralysed, he thinks, and then, John.

He remembers the rooftop, Moriarty's suicide, diving off the roof. All memorable things. But the strongest image, the one that opens his eyes wide with remembrance, and shuts them again, tightly, in pain, is John Watson's pale face, so small at such a distance, staring up at him while he tries to stop Sherlock from jumping. It was in that second that he realised that John Watson loves him. He knew he'd liked him, a lot, was fond of him, cared about him, but the expression on his upturned face as Sherlock lied to him about being a fraud – disbelief, frustration and horror, shocked Sherlock with the truth of John's feelings even as he spread his arms wide and stepped off the rooftop.

It had been necessary to do what he'd done. John had had to see Sherlock's death to believe it. But Sherlock cannot delete that face, that cry.

"How is he?" he croaks at Molly, and it doesn't seem strange that she knows who he means.

"He's a mess," she tells him. "The sooner he knows you're okay the better."

"No," says Sherlock. "He can't know."

Molly looks at him, horrified. "But..."

"Nobody can know, Molly," Sherlock says, wincing as he tries to raise himself.

Molly catches him as he groans in pain. "Lie down, Sherlock, it's too soon. The drug's still affecting you."

His head rolls back as she gently lays him down again. His brain floats, balloon-like, above the trolley; far more dissociated than he's ever experienced in his cocaine adventures. But for once he wants to stay _in_ his head, wants to stay connected to reality, because if he lets himself drift away he'll...he'll what? What was important? What was he thinking just a second ago?

The drug moves through him, leaving him empty headed, and the physical pain he is suffering grows in intensity till there is nothing else. Molly looks at him helplessly. She still wants him, more than she's ever wanted anyone, or anything, but all she can do is help him.

He fights the pain the only way he can, with his brain. He builds a makeshift mindpalace; sparsely furnished because the poison interferes with his co-ordinates. Then he finds what he was looking for, and his palace collapses like a house of cards. "John", he groans, and the pain and shock slide him back into unconsciousness as Molly cries for what she wants, and what she could give him and he won't ever take.

* * *

Harriet Watson peers drunkenly at her inebriated brother as he bends forward in his chair, trying to stop the vomit from rising in his gut. "You're sick, Johnny," she tells him, and whilst there's a certain amount of sympathy in her manner, so too is there gloating.

"You'd know," he slurs. "Years of knowledge, you. You like it when I'm down here with you, in the gutter..."

"No place like home," she sniggers. The sound makes his gut twist and he spews a night's worth of acid alcohol over his bare feet. The acrid smell catches in his throat, and again he retches, his stomach muscles cramping over and over until there's nothing left but bile. He presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose, his head throbbing, his brain, unwelcomely, clearing. Looks up to see Harry, holding another bottle up for him. Grabs it and chugs it; water in the desert.

"Isn't co-dependancy wonderful?" his sister coos, joking, a bunged-on 'aw shucks' tone to her voice. Bitter. She's so bitter, John thinks, through his red haze. Not much more, now, and he'll be out cold again. "Pass us the bottle," he says.

"Nuh-uh," Harry taunts him, withholding the last bottle, tipping it into her mouth. "You've had enough, little brother."

He lunges at her, leaving the chair, one fist clenched, "I said give me the fucking bottle!" he snarls, his other hand reaching, fingers clawed, for it. His coordination is shot and the bottle knocks against her teeth as he grabs it. Harry's lip begins to bleed, her face splits with tears. John doesn't care.

"You've always hated me," she sobs, maudlin now. John can't even look at her, he's so full of rage. That she should be here, her waste of a life when Sherlock...

"You're absolutely right." He bites the words at her. "I have always fucking hated you." It feels good to say it, good to hurt her. She deserves it. "So get the fuck out of my flat, my life. Don't come near me again, ever."

"You don't mean that," she says, "we're all we've got."

"Oh no we're not," he says, bitterly, swigging from the bottle. "We've got this!" He holds it before him, his eyes swimming. When will it be enough? All he wants is unconsciousness.

"That's not the answer," she tells him, earnestly, almost primly. He looks at her bleary face, the red eyes and bags of flesh beneath them, the tell-tale features of a habitual drunk.

"Oh, you're a piece of work, you are," he laughs, without humour. "You fucking hypocrite!"

She makes a sudden grab for his bottle, and again he lunges, catching her by the hair and shaking her head violently.

"I said get the fuck away from me. I meant it." He lets go of her hair and she puts her hands dizzily up to her head. "So get!"

She staggers when she stands, fearful of him, of his hatred. He enjoys the rage, the violence, still building within him. It's time he stopped letting her hurt him. She leaves and he finishes the bottle, quickly, but there is not enough to put him to sleep. He remembers the rum he's hidden from her, stashed under the stairs. He lurches down them noisily and grabs the bottle from the stairwell hatch. Mrs Hudson is there, standing in her doorway.

"John, _dear_," she says, anguish in her voice as she looks at the ruin he is making of himself.

"Fuck off," he tells her, succinctly, and pulls himself back upstairs, his painful limp made even worse by the alcohol.

* * *

John sits on the sofa wishing, against his own will, he could still feel Sherlock's indentation on the cushions, smell him in the fabric. But Sherlock's been dead for going on eleven months now, and apart from his stuff, covered in dust like the rest of the flat, there's nothing of him, of his essence, left. Even if there were, John would not be able to detect it because John stinks. He rarely bathes these days. The smell of stale rum pervades the rooms he drinks in – this one and Sherlock's bedroom, which John's moved into because his leg is too bad for the stairs.

They leave him alone, now. For a long while they tried to get through to him, Lestrade and Mrs Hudson. Molly gave up on him after the funeral, when his fury caused him to lash out at everyone. Harriet never returned after the night he attacked her. He's briefly ashamed as he thinks back to that, but only briefly. He's so full of rage that nobody wants to trigger it – so they leave him alone.

He feels utter contempt for them, these well-meaning, soft sentimentalists who find his anger surprising. He's a soldier, for fuck's sake. A weapon. He's killed people in the heat of battle and cold-bloodedly.

Most of all he's angry, livid, ferociously _furious_ with Sherlock. John hates Sherlock. He hates the man's selfishness, he hates that he, John, was made to listen and _watch_, for god's sake, _watch_ him as he wasted himself on the cold grey pavement. John doesn't care anymore _why_ Sherlock did it, he's just disgusted by the cowardice and the ingratitude Sherlock showed, the disregard for life. Because yes, John has killed as a soldier, but as a doctor he knows the true value of a life, an existence. He'll never forgive Sherlock for pissing his life away, his future, against the unfeeling concrete of his suicide.

After the will is read and John understands that Sherlock has bought the flat and left it to him, John stops working. Mrs Hudson delivers food once a week. Sometimes John eats. John always drinks. The stronger the alcohol, the quicker it knocks him out.

He drinks from the bottle – and John finds himself sometimes thinking of the rum as his medicine. "Gotta take your medicine, Johnny boy," he tells himself occasionally, with black humour, remembering his mother in the last throes of the cancer that killed her. But he does. He does have to take it. Because his life is forfeit and only the blank of stupor stops him thinking.

He is dead to the world the night he's abducted. He's on the floor, one hand still gripping the neck of the bottle, facedown in his own vomit. That's not unusual these days.

* * *

John awakens suddenly and painfully, as he always does from his alcoholic sleep. Hangovers are a thing of the past – why suffer when you can just postpone it by staying drunk 24/7/365? Reflexively he rolls to his left, his hand reaching for the bottle of rum he remembers (sort of) leaving beside the bed. The momentum topples him onto the floor himself. _Fuck._ His head hurts on the outside too, now. He gropes for the bottle but pulls up short when his fingers brush cold tiles instead of the sticky carpet he expected. He opens eyes gummy with sleep and rheum.

He's in a bathroom. His muzzy mind recognises things – a sink, a bath, a lav – but he's never seen these particular ones before. A tiny window lets in grey light but he can't pinpoint the time of day. And, weirdly, there's a bed. A very comfortable bed. That he just fell out of. In a bathroom.

John's head pounds and his vision doubles. He has to have a drink before he can even try to think about where he is and how he got there, and why. But there is no bottle. Shit. He gets up slowly, then kneels, lowers his aching head to look under the bed. No bottle. Panic begins to rise in him. Getting shakily to his feet he strips the bed; no bottle. Shit, shit, shit. Where is he? Where is the bottle?

He turns, makes for the door, can't open it. Hurls himself at it in futility. He has grown so unused to speech that it is only after thudding uselessly against the door several times that he thinks to yell. "Where am I, who the fuck brought me here, I'm going to kill you, let me out, let me out letme outletmeoutletme..."

He punches the door so hard his hand goes numb. He crams it into his belly, folds himself around it, whimpering. His eisHis HHis very cell is shrieking for a drink and he can't bear it.

He hears movement on the other side of the door.

"Who are you?" he yells, slamming himself at the door again. "Get me the fuck out of here. What do you think you're doing you sick fuck?!"

An envelope slides under the door, his name on the front.

"Who are you? Answer me!" he calls. "Answer me!" but there is silence on the other side.

He picks up the envelope to read in bed, but is ripped out of his intention by a nausea so strong he can't make it to the lav in time. He vomits copiously, all over himself and the tiles. It shakes him so strongly he can't stand up and he crawls to the toilet, just reaching it before the next acid stream leaves his mouth violently. He kneels in front of the loo, supporting himself with his arms on the rim of the bowl, gasping for breath while his guts rearrange themselves.

When he stops heaving, after a while, John carefully pulls himself onto his feet, and staggers to the bed. He pulls his vomit-stained top off, balls it up and hurls it into the far corner, near the tub. He crawls back into the bed and pulls the blankets up over his naked chest, shivering suddenly with cold.

There's nothing special about the envelope. His name is typewritten. The letter inside is word processed, the paper generic printing paper. It doesn't smell like anything. It is completely undistinguished and indistinguishable.

'Dear John,' it reads.

"Well waddayaknow, a genuine 'dear John' letter," he thinks, sourly.

'I know how you must be feeling right now. I'm afraid I can't enlighten you in terms of my identity, suffice it to say that I am a friend with your welfare wholly at heart. I mean you no harm, and you can rest assured that, on the contrary, I will do my utmost to further your best interests. It has been brought to my attention that you have developed, shall we say, a _dependency _upon alcohol. You have taken that dependency to the point, almost, of no return, probably beyond even your own medical knowledge.

Whilst you were unconscious I took the liberty of having you medically examined. Your liver has sustained some damage, and your kidney function is substantially reduced. However, the good news is that the damage is not irreparable, though your alcohol intake needs to cease immediately to prevent further damage and mend that which has occurred. I have taken this step, now, in order to prevent you sustaining the brain damage which inevitably occurs through long term alcohol abuse. You have a fine mind, John, and I fully intend it to stay that way.

Accordingly, I have arranged your circumstances such that you must, colloquially speaking, 'dry out'.

I am aware, as, of course, are you, that such a process is highly unpleasant. Believe me if there was some quick and painless answer I would greatly prefer it. But, alas, there isn't. So, this must be dealt with practically.

I can't have you escape before the process is complete. I know you well enough that I am sure once you've gone through it you will be grateful for this intercession. But I also know how resourceful you can be. Your less than luxurious accommodation is necessary for your security as well as to provide essential facilities for your recovery. I have tried to make you as comfortable as is possible. The linen press is well stocked with food, though as I can't chance an opportunistic use of fire as a means of escape you will be unable to cook. You will also find clean clothes in there. May I suggest that you dispose of your soiled garments through the window; I imagine the smell of them may disturb you otherwise. Lastly, there is a medical kit in the cupboard beneath the washbasin, containing the relevant drugs you will need, and their dosages. Please avail yourself of them, John – you know they will help.

I assure you that no matter how loudly you appeal for assistance, no-one will answer you. You will not, however, be unheard, nor unobserved.

You do have my deep sympathy, John. We both know the next week will be hell. I can only hope you'll forgive my interference, but please believe I have your welfare at heart.'

It's unsigned, of course, but John would recognise that dry-as-dust language anywhere. The whole situation smacks of him; intervention the Mycroft way.

John's furious all over again, and scared. He knows Mycroft's unswerving once he's determined a course of action.

"Mycroft!" he yells, despite the throb that sets up in his head as a result. "Mycroft you bastard! Let me out! This is kidnapping, you madman! Even you can't do this! What makes you above the law?!"

He yells till his throat is raw, but answer comes there none.

John wears himself out with his begging and cursing and yelling. His hand is swollen. He knows it will be bruised black tomorrow. He winds up on the bed, cocooned in bedding, gasping with need. He sleeps, after a fashion, his dreams haunted by visions of Sherlock, of Mycroft, of Harry, of himself divided bloodily into parts which can't be stitched together again.

He comes to, hours later, shivering and throwing up nothing but bile. His hand throbs with every pulse of his blood. He yells again, repeatedly, the back of his throat so sore he can barely swallow.

* * *

The signs and symptoms of acute alcohol abstinence syndrome generally begin 6 to 24 hours after the patient takes his or her last drink. The acute phase of alcohol abstinence syndrome may begin when the patient still has significant blood alcohol concentrations. Signs and symptoms may include:

Restlessness, irritability, anxiety, agitation

Anorexia, nausea, vomitingTremor, elevated heart rate, increased blood pressure

Insomnia, intense dreaming, nightmares

Impaired concentration, memory, and judgment

Increased sensitivity to sounds, alteration in tactile sensations

Delirium (disorientation to time, place, situation)

Hallucinations (auditory, visual, or tactile

)Delusions (usually paranoid)

Grand mal seizures

Elevated temperature.

When John looks back on his enforced detox, he's somewhat grateful not to remember those days too clearly. Having spent most of the first day frenziedly screaming for help, knowing what he was facing, he was unprepared for the hammer blow that fell sooner than he'd expected or hoped. He remembers curling in a foetal position, or trying to force himself out of a window smaller than his head. There was the constant nausea and he recalls hanging for hours over the toilet bowl. Then his head. He recalls the times he tried to sleep, when he teetered between tooth-grinding insomnia and nightmares so ghastly he threw himself out of the bed to wake up.

Then there were the D.T.s Hallucinations he experienced whilst awake (at least, he thought he was awake). The seven year old Afghan boy blown up by an IED, John trying to sew his legs back on with a knitting needle. Mycroft standing over his bed, shaking his head. Sherlock, striding through the locked door, peering in through the window, his head bloodied and his eyes dulled. Accompanied by auditory hallucinations; "Come on John, do keep up."

His continuous tremors leave every muscle hurting, cramping.

The drugs provided for John are the standard antipsychotics and benzodiazepines he has himself prescribed when detoxifying an inebriate. He remembers the dosages being written clearly on the boxes, but can't say with any certainty that he followed the directions. All he knows is that on Day 8 he is weak but straight. For the first time in a long time, he's hungry. He peruses the foodstuffs stacked on a shelf of the linen press, and finds they've changed. Where before there were ready to eat military supply packets of food, now there is a selection of fresh fruit and vegetables, and nuts in glass jars.

There is a bar fridge on the middle shelf, and he looks inside it. Cheese. Stilton and Red Leicester, brie, goats' cheese. And there it is; Flosserkase, his favourite.

When the hell did they do that?

There is an envelope on the shelf. He opens it. Another letter.

'Dear John,

I must congratulate you on your recovery. I am well aware of how difficult it has been for you. You got through it with your usual efficiency. (John winces, remembering with self-disgust the things he screamed, the obscenities he shouted. Efficiency. Right.)

I trust you now not to hurt yourself. I know you well enough to be sure you will not. I will not release you for some time, as you are at your most vulnerable now. I won't take the risk that you might relapse.

Welcome back, John. I look forward to greeting you in person. Until then, please remember that I am your friend and only want what's best for you.'

John swears, punches the door with his good hand. But not as hard, this time, and that in itself tells him something. The letter writer has it right. John does not want to hurt himself. He is recognising a future in which he needs to be whole.

The letter writer. John has thought till now that Mycroft was behind the intervention. But the cheese makes him think again. John well remembers the nights he and Sherlock spent researching cheeses for the Case of the Curdled Headmaster. He had been so sick of the stuff he'd sworn off it for life, but that was before he discovered Flossekase cheese from Switzerland. Crafted from raw cow's milk and washed in hops, the cheese was and still is the best he's ever eaten, and for a while there he couldn't get enough of it, particularly with his favourite beer. Bizarrely, every time he ran out of it, a new round would appear magically in the fridge, in the cheese compartment, no less. Away from the other unspeakable contents. Of course John still bought the milk, that was a given, he was resigned to that. Sherlock never mentioned the cheese, so neither did John, but now, in this godawful bathroom, he holds the Flosserkase in suddenly shaking hands.

John despises himself for the sudden surge of emotion he registers when he considers the possibility that he is here at Sherlock's behest. It's hope he feels, and he tries to squash it down, pushes it with his mind, but it won't be denied. He leaves the cheese where it is, no longer hungry.

* * *

When John wakes on his fourth day of sobriety the bathroom door is ajar. Tachycardia forces his wild pulse through his whole body and he is afraid for a moment that his heart will explode in his chest and shatter him into molecules, into motes. He pushes himself through the door. His eyes lock onto Mycroft, who sits at a scrubbed, elderly table with a cup raised to his lips.

"Ah, John," Mycroft begins, but finds himself suddenly on the floor, John standing above him and glaring down, his face livid.

"How dare you!" John says, his voice low and furious. "How bloody _dare_ you do that to me! I could have died in that bloody bathroom!"

"No, John, I assure you that could not have happened. You were never left alone here I prom..."

"All right, where is he?" John demands, bending down where he can see Mycroft's face more closely. "Where is the bastard?"

"Who?" Mycroft looks genuinely confused.

"Don't play stupid, Mycroft!" John spits. "I know you and your bastard brother too well to believe a fucking word either of you say. I knew it!" he says. "I knew the fucker was faking it. Where is he?!"

"Oh," Mycroft says, sitting up slowly. "Oh, John, I'm so sorry. I didn't think..."

"Don't you dare lie to me!" John growls, and Mycroft shrinks from the rage in his voice and face.

"Please," he says. John has never heard Mycroft speak with such pain, never seen such vulnerability on the usually urbane face. He stands up, letting Mycroft raise himself from the floor. When John next looks at him, his face no longer distorted by his prone position, he sees the death of any awakened hope that Sherlock might be somewhere near, waiting for John, waiting to say "Surprise!"

Mycroft doesn't look like he's been eating at all recently. His face is drawn, old age forecasting its pall over grief-honed lineaments. His suit hangs as inelegantly as is ever possible on Mycroft – he seems all sharp shoulders and knees. John can see his Adam's apple, oddly vulnerable above the starched shirt collar. It bobs as Mycroft swallows and speaks.

"I'm sorry beyond all measure, John," he says. "It never occurred to me that you might think it was Sher.." he gulps, " Sherlo... my _brother_, doing all this." He indicates the room, vaguely. "I – I thought you knew. I thought you _knew_ he was dead." His face contorts momentarily and John understands. Mycroft knows Sherlock isn't ever coming back and if ever John needed absolute proof that his friend is dead, it's there before him. Mycroft couldn't be counterfeiting this.

Up till now, John would have told you that he was one hundred percent positive that Sherlock Holmes no longer exists. But standing there watching Mycroft, he understands that somewhere inside himself, in some tiny corner of his heart, some minuscule neural connection in his brain, he has always hoped. Sherlock was so clever, Mycroft so powerful, that despite himself John has been hoping that between them they'd have arranged things properly. Now, looking at Mycroft's worn, miserable face, that hope dies. And John's grief renews itself, as agonising as it ever was. He quickly suppresses it and it is subsumed by his furious hatred for the man who made him feel this way. Mycroft steps back from the expression he reads on John's face. John instantly puts his hand on Mycroft's arm. "I'm sorry, Mycroft, I'm not angry with _you_."

The man in the suit breathes out. He recognises John's expression for what it is.

"I thought you knew, I thought you were certain," Mycroft tells him. "You certainly behaved like..."

"Yeah, I know," says John. "I just missed him, you know? I couldn't tell what was real – I'm so angry with him. I thought...I don't know what I thought...I didn't know what to think." His eyes leak salt droplets. H e closes them for a moment. The one and only time he has cried for his friend was the last time he visited the graveyard. Even then, he recalls now, he was three-quarters convinced that Sherlock was alive, that he could return to John with one last miracle. "Don't be dead", he'd half begged, half demanded.

But if Sherlock was alive, Mycroft would know.

Mycroft, whose back is no longer so straight, who has unhappy circles under his eyes. Who looks at John now with compassion, with sympathy. Who's gotten him off the grog.

"Why'd you do this?" John asks. "Sherlock's gone. Why would you waste your time on me? Without Sherlock I'm nothing. To you, anyway."

"John, John," tsks Mycroft. "Never think that. You mean a lot to me in your own right, and to your friends. My brother was often wrong about people – not _what_ they do but _why_. But he was absolutely accurate when it came to you. He was very fortunate to have made your acquaintance and to have earned your friendship. He said you were extraordinary, and I have to agree with him. You gave him something in his last years that he'd not had since we were children; fraternity, affection. Loyalty. You made him happy."

"I loved him, Mycroft," John almost whispers. "I loved him, and I never told him. His friendship meant more to me than any other relationship I've ever had, and I couldn't stop him. He made me fail, Mycroft. He knew I couldn't save him and he made me watch anyway. Why would he do that? He turned me into a victim. I loved him – I'd have died for him. And he used that love against me. I'll never forgive him."

He draws breath, a gasp. He sits down at the table, elbows on the wooden surface, eyes shadowed by his hands.

Mycroft lays a hand on John's shoulder. "I'll make tea," he says, and something fractures John's chest as he remembers the so many times he's said the same thing to Mycroft's brother. When they first met Sherlock didn't drink tea, but John had corrupted Sherlock's previously exclusive coffee habit till he was as addicted to the whole ritual of tea making and drinking as John himself. John recalls breakfast teapots, afternoon mugs, fine china with Mrs Hudson, polystyrene cups of brown sludge at Barts. He remembers snatches of conversation.

"John, I'm going to buy you a kimono – you were obviously a geisha in some former life."

"Ha! Pot: kettle: noir."

"Oh no, John, not another one of your ridiculously obvious tea-themed puns. I can't stand it."

"But Sherlock, you have to stand it or it won't steep!"

"Oh, groan."

John feels the grief he's pushed away slamming at his heart and head. He takes a deep breath, emptying both, and then fills the spaces with rage, with hatred. He will not allow himself to be dragged under the ocean of sorrow that pulls at him with its spring tide, not when his buoyant fury can keep him from drowning in it.

Mycroft's bland expression as he sits with John at the table hides his considerable concern for the man he feels his brother has all but destroyed. John has come back to himself; he is sober, he can face the world again. But, thinks Mycroft, John Watson is not ready to face the world. He is still too damaged. Too vulnerable.

"I wonder, John, if I may be so bold as to suggest a course of action to you," Mycroft says quietly into the silence between them.

"You may as well," says John, "to be honest I've got nothing planned." He laughs somewhat bitterly. "I doubt any of my former colleagues are going to want to work with me again."

"John, the very first thing you should know is that your being here is directly due to your "colleagues'" concerns for you. Detective Inspector Lestrade, Molly Hooper and Mrs Hudson were so worried about you that they contacted me. They are your _friends_, John. Lestrade, in particular, has spent the last year clearing Sherlock's name. He did this largely for you. And," Mycroft says, very gently, "I hope you consider me a friend as well. Anything I can do for you will be done."

The fragility of John's emotional state becomes evident as tears drop from behind the hand shading his eyes into his cup of tea, which stands almost untouched on the table. Mycroft looks away, knowing John's pride will be wounded if he knows he's been seen.

"Thank you, Mycroft," John says, eventually, his face composed again. "I may not have agreed to your heavy-handed methods of bringing me back, but I do appreciate the results. And I'm glad to know they don't all hate me. But I still don't know where to go from here."

"Which brings me back to my suggestion, John, which is: don't go anywhere yet."

"Sorry?" Johns says. "Run that past me again."

"I think you need some time for reflection, John," Mycroft tells him. "Use this place. You can be self sufficient here – there's plenty of food and I can deliver other supplies if you so desire. The weather's cold, I grant you – and will probably get colder. We usually have snow in winter. But there's air conditioning as well as the fireplace, and enough cut wood outside. Believe me one can be very comfortable here – I've stayed here for weeks at a time, and as for Sherlock" - John winces at the name - "Sherlock used this place for solitude and refuge many times over the years. "

Solitude and refuge, John muses. It sounds restful. John has been scared of the pressures of going back to London, of having to take up the reins of his life again. He's particularly scared that if it all starts spinning away from him again he'll try to anchor himself with liquor. Here he can take time to regroup, to find his centre again, with no means of giving in to any temptation towards escape from himself through alcohol.

"How would I leave?" he asks. "Where's the nearest road? Will I have access to a vehicle?"

"No," Mycroft tells him. "We are almost fifty miles from the nearest road, and it is almost the same distance from there to the nearest village. There is no car access to this lodge; the only way in or out is a long, difficult walk. There are no regular paths or trails here. You will be stuck here if you agree to stay."

"I don't think so, Mycroft," John says. The thought of being stuck with himself, no company even possible, terrifies him.

"But John, think of the strength of will you can develop here, away from temptations and distractions. It's not as though you're stuck here with nothing to do. There's a wall of books behind you. I have your laptop."

"That's not going to be much good to me," John tells him. "No internet."

"Don't be silly, John," Mycroft says, sounding so much like his brother John stares at him a moment.

"Of course we have wi-fi here, and television, if you can bear the standard of so-called entertainment that is broadcast in these decadent days."

Of course, John thinks. Back of nowhere, just past Bumfuck, Egypt: of course they'd have all the mod cons. After all, the place belongs to the Holmes's. Their Holme away from home. He smiles, wryly, and doesn't say it.

"Erm...Mycroft, just how the hell do _you_ get here then? I mean, you don't look like you've just walked a hundred miles or so," he indicates the three piece suit, the immaculate brogues and the ubiquitous umbrella. "What, did you float down under your brolly, like Mary Poppins?"

He giggles, a little. Surprisingly, it warms Mycroft's heart.

"Well, no, not under my umbrella, as such," he chuckles. "But yes, I did fly here." He leads John to the door, opening it so John can see the neat black helicopter parked on the cleared lawn. He recognises the pilot sitting in the cockpit, glued to her blackberry.

"Huh," John sniggers. "Why am I not surprised?"

They go back inside, shutting the bitter cold out. John makes another cup of tea.

"If I was to go for this idea," he ponders aloud, passing Mycroft his refilled cup, "if something happened, or I went stir-crazy or just wanted company – if I just really, really had to get of here..."

"All my phone lines are classified, but I'll give you my secure personal email," Mycroft assures him, "and I would send the helicopter for you if you needed it. Other than that, I'd make it my business to make a flying visit every three weeks – or more, or less frequently, your choice. It's only an hour here."

John thinks, a frown creasing his forehead, his eyes closed. He breathes out, stares at Mycroft, licks his lips.

"Alright," he says, and it's a relief. No need to worry about life for a while.

Mycroft gives him what looks like a grin of genuine pleasure. John is touched and a little surprised. Mycroft's former smiles have always made him think of a shark. A condescending, patronising man-eating shark. He smiles back. "Thank you, Mycroft," he says. "Thanks very much."

Before he leaves, Mycroft helps John move the bed from the bathroom out to the living room. They set it before the fireplace. The place is freezing and John builds a fire from the stack of wood and kindling piled neatly beside the hearth against the wall.

* * *

John feeds the fire, lavishing wood upon it. He sits back against the side of the bed and opens his book. Of course the Holmes' hunting lodge would be well stocked – games, books, even a telly, though John's not ready for that much connection to the outside world. The fire is really a luxury, a reverse cycle air conditioner provides efficient though less ambient warmth. Still, the flames reach into him in a way no other source of heat can – all his life he's loved open fires, even in his Army days. He reminds himself to gather more wood in the morning.

Wriggling his toes in their socks he sighs with pure comfort and begins to read. It's 'The Moonstone' by Wilkie Collins, largely credited as the first ever detective story in English. As happens every time he reads a book or watches a movie, in his head there is a blueberries-in-dark-chocolate voice narrating rational objections to the plot. He hates it, loathes having Sherlock in his brain. In Collins's example, the objections are obvious, but John finds the kinder, more innocent context of the story touching and nostalgic. In the days of its first fame, people still associated crime with theft, and mystery and gothic atmospheres, not violent rape or cynical murder. His own innocence is long gone; what he saw in Afghanistan was compounded by association with his barking mad flatmate and their exploits. But John knows he truly lost all innocence the day he watched Sherlock swan dive to his death. It's ironic, John recognises, sardonically, that Sherlock successfully removed what Afghanistan had never been able to: John's innate sense of optimism that the world is mostly good.

John feels as weak as he did after he took the bullet, his body convalescing from the systemic poisoning he's subjected it to. He knows he won't recover quickly and is grateful for the neutral space Mycroft has provided for him to do so. It's strange that the Holmes's lodge does feel so neutral, after all Sherlock has, apparently, stayed here in the past. But unlike Baker Street, here there is no direct reminder of him. No unfinished experiments, no untouched violin, no grief-stricken landlady, no dusty skull on the equally dusty mantelpiece. He doesn't know which books, if any, on the well stocked shelves have been read by Sherlock. The refrigerator is bare of body parts, the cutlery bereft of interesting mould.

When he gets tired of his own company, John walks. He has explored 360 degrees around the lodge, up to about three miles. He gets tired too fast, limping along with his new stick (provided by Mycroft), to go further but believes the truth of Mycroft's description of the isolation of this place. On the third day it snows, lightly enough at first for John to welcome, to greet it as a friend – he has always loved winter in the English countryside. But then he barely makes it back to the lodge in time to beat the heavier snowfall before the lodge is hidden from him entirely. That night he has to turn the air-con on to augment the fire, and feels vaguely guilty about the carbon emissions. Not guilty enough, however, to stay cold.

John emails Mycroft, who has asked for him to check in regularly. His laptop is a relief to John – he's been gradually letting the world, or selective parts thereof, back into his mind. He rarely looks for the latest news – too depressing – but quite enjoys indulging himself in random net surfing, following wherever his curiosity may lead him.

He avoids his own blog, or Sherlock's website, or anything that could possibly remind him of his previous life.

And he reads obsessively. He works his way through 'Moby Dick', 'Tristram Shandy', 'The Sower and the Seed'. He finds the latter painful and doesn't really understand why until he's finished it, and he's thinking about it, and he realises Jack Celliers reminds him of Sherlock. He reads 'Kavalier and Clay', and Tom Sharp for comic relief. John hasn't had time to read like this since secondary school, and he feels his brain being stretched, in a good way.

But every night John's mind is infected by violent, virulent images that repeat themselves endlessly. He's awakened by them, discovers himself sitting up in the bed, or on the floor where he's launched himself in a subconsciously reflexive attempt to stop them. Flashbacks to desert and blood, watching a dark coat float from a building to land in an ocean of gore, red- eyed monsters cornering him in tiny spaces, these visions leave him trembling, crying tears he never sheds while awake.

Worst of all recurring nightmares, though, are the ones where he dreams he's drunk. He feels so besmirched by them, so violated. In these dreams he's disgusted with himself for giving in to the craving for alcohol, for falling off the wagon. He's haunted by the horrors and despises himself, in his dreams for being weak and drunk, and when he's awake because he believes that he only dreams these things because he must actually still want to do them. John hates himself for the way he behaved all the time he was drinking, hates the way he treated people he cares about, and is terrified of going back to that dark existence.

John is used to nightmares. He has lived with them a long time, his brain often showing him a palimpsest of horrors seen over years of military and medical experience. One of the beauties of the life he had lived with Sherlock was the lessened incidence of his bad dreams. But in his frail condition, physically weakened by both his long period of drunkenness and the extremes to which his body was subjected during detox, and psychologically undermined by self-loathing and the nightmares themselves, John's recovery is slow, so hard to heal is his psyche.

He is asleep in the bed beside the guttering fire, six weeks after his detox, dreaming of a misty moor and a red-eyed, sharptoothed monster chasing him endlessly, when he wakes abruptly. He's sure he hears something, a scratching on the outside walls, a muted growl, and a thump against the door. He stumbles out of bed, still half asleep, then falls back as something fierce and wild slams the door open and thrusts itself through the doorway.

Without pause, John throws himself at the bathroom door, pulling it violently shut after him and turning the key. He pulls up against it, breath heaving out of his chest as he starts to shake uncontrollably, his teeth rattling in his head, trying to make sense of what he's seen. His stunned brain recalls wild hair and mad, glittering eyes staring at him in a moment of intense stillness, of utter, laser-like focus. John tries desperately to calm himself. His heartbeat is already so loud and fast he's scared he'll have a heart attack. Because what he's seen he can't have seen.

He slides down until he's sitting on the floor and leaning all his weight against the door.

* * *

Sherlock climbs down from the cab of the sixteen wheeler rig, as the driver bids him farewell.

"Thank you so much for the lift," he tells the driver, his voice somewhat husky. "I apologise profusely for feeling it incumbent upon myself to inform you of your wife's mother's affair with your stepbrother's father in law – I should have kept that to myself."

"You really are a bit of a git, aren't you," the driver says, tolerantly, "I don't mind, anyway. Keep the old bat busy with something other than trying to run my marriage."

With a friendly blast from the truck's horn he drives away, leaving Sherlock standing on the shoulder of the road. Behind him is dense forest. There is no discernible path, but Sherlock pulls out a compass and checks it. He turns decisively to the northwest and doggedly begins his trek through the crowded trees. It's later in the day than he'd planned, and the sky is grey and lowering. He shivers, buttons up his coat and reties his scarf more snugly. He has hours of walking ahead of him, and a painfully swollen gash in his thigh.

His mind is as busy as ever as he strides through the thick undergrowth, refusing to allow the pain to slow him down. He finds himself thinking, yet again, of John. The nervous excitement he feels as a quiver in his stomach when he anticipates seeing him once again heats his blood as he tries to plan how he will make that happen. He's only been back in England for two days, and doesn't know where John is. He hopes 221B stills calls itself home for John, and that he himself will be able to return there. Sherlock has been unhappy for so long that his priorities have undergone a permanent shift. He no longer feels bored when he imagines a day to day life with John at the flat. He is tired, and his survival strategies have been so overstretched that he can't seem to function in any other mode. And then there's the pain, becoming a serious problem because it clouds his mind and sets his teeth on edge. But Sherlock doesn't allow himself to feel pain, doesn't do sickness, or weakness, so he refuses to think about that at all.

John Watson, however, he's a subject Sherlock's brain returns to incessantly. John, who made him feel special but, unlike everybody else in Sherlock's life, special in a good way. John, who has unhesitatingly put himself between Sherlock and danger, every time. Well, every time except one, and that was not for want of wanting to. Whose slow smile, which lights his eyes with affection, has kept Sherlock's memory warm over dreary months of finding and disposing of Moriarty's leftovers; all over the globe, all by himself. Sherlock has been so lonely he sometimes almost believed in his own death. Nobody in England besides Molly knows the truth, and for her own safety as well as his he has not contacted her since that bloody day he jumped.

Sherlock checks his compass and changes direction. The day is ending, making everything dimmer and greyer, and cold air gusts around him, even amidst the trees, bringing the taste of snow to his chapped lips. He's freezing, and snowfall will not be kind to him. Inside his leather gloves his hands are numb, and his feet, though shod in heavy duty hiking boots, are beginning to hurt with the cold. He tries to shrug off a fit of shivering but faces the realisation that he has no hope of getting warm anytime soon. He tries, painfully, to change his brisk walk to a soldierly march, laughing inwardly at the image he presents himself with, but then sobers when he thinks of John the soldier. Did he march? Do military doctors have to?

Funny, he thinks, a bit blurrily, the only military doctor he knows intimately is Hawkeye Pierce from MASH, and he is a major aberration. Come to think of it, MASH itself was an aberration – the only television show he and Mycroft watched together. Or at all.

John is nothing like Hawkeye Pierce.

Sherlock shakes his head, muzzily. He's not thinking sensibly. Why is he trying to march? He stops for a moment, catches his breath and sets off again.

And the pain in Sherlock's thigh ratchets up several notches as he puts his weight on that foot, and he can't not deal with it because his whole leg is weakened by it, and for the first time he has to limp – and that thought brings him back to John. Everything, always, brings him back to John.

Sherlock is suddenly surrounded by falling snow. Apart from his own progress through the undergrowth there is no sound. Silent, floating plumes drift across his vision, settle on his head and back. Sherlock has spent weeks in Russia, months in Asia and Africa. He has adapted to sub zero temperatures and searing, melting heat, but he has never felt as cold and exposed as he does right now, here in his motherland, making his way towards a place he has known as sanctuary all his life.

Like a refugee in a leaky boat, all Sherlock can think of is his destination. Night's falling and he feels as though he's been walking for days, through the driving snow which is becoming deep enough that he must kick through it with each step. His teeth chatter and he clenches his gloved hands trying to warm them. Occasionally, though, that strange, heated, dizzy sensation overtakes him, and he welcomes the fever as it warms him briefly.

When the lodge looms out of the snow, out of the dark, he doesn't even notice the smoke coming from the stone-built chimney. He scrabbles for the key he knows is taped above the lintel, but his hands are too numb within his gloves. With difficulty he strips one off and sees his hand is dead white, seemingly frozen into a claw – he clumsily drops the key and grunts dizzily, bending to pick it up. It takes him several attempts at the keyhole before the door opens and he falls through it, seeing the darkness lit by fire, the bed in front of the hearth and John, caught in action, his face a mask of horror, and Sherlock goes still because_ John _and when he tries to speak his rusty voice growls, and in that split second John is across the room and behind the bathroom door. Sherlock hears the key turning.

Shocked into inertia, Sherlock's brain tells the part of him that wants to go straight to John that he can't, yet. He stumbles over to the bed and sinks down before it, stripping gloves and shoes and socks off, holding hands and feet as close to the flames as he can as he agonisingly thaws. He tries to shout to John that he's here, and wants to see him, but his voice really is too croaky, his throat dry and swollen somehow – he hadn't noticed that happening till now. He gives up the attempt and removes his heavy coat with hands that are tingling unpleasantly with returning sensation, making him want to tuck them under his armpits in a sort of frustrated relief. He drapes the coat across the side of the bed, hoping the fire will dry it quickly. His sweater and shirt are not as damp and he leaves them on. He is still far from warm, but no longer shaking with the cold.

* * *

John is silent, behind the heavy door. Sherlock can't understand what's happening to him. In all the fantasised scenarios he has indulged himself with when things have been so awful he _had_ to think of John in simple self-preservation, in order to be able to just keep going, the meetings he envisaged did not encompass John running away and hiding. He had expected John perhaps to hit him, maybe cry over him, maybe John wouldn't speak to him or forgive him for a while. He'd hoped John would just understand straight away, that too many words need not be said. He is still quite sure that John will forgive him eventually. He always has before.

But John's apparent terror, his panic...that he didn't expect. Such fear is uncharacteristic of John – despite his nightmares he's has always made every effort to keep the lid on the horrors he must have seen throughout his career. The only time Sherlock has seen him this scared was under the effects of the gas he'd been exposed to in Sherlock's ill-conceived experiment in the laboratory at Dartmoor. And doesn't Sherlock feel guilty about that, all this time later. Hasn't he regretted it with all his heart, since he discovered, the hard way, just how amazing John Watson is, and what his friendship means to Sherlock.

* * *

John is gradually coming to terms with what he has seen. Yes, his hair is longer and unkempt – but John would recognise the shape of Sherlock's head if the man had an afro. The coat, the scarf, the height – all Sherlock's. The eyes, well, even when he recalls the eyes, fevered and sunken, which met his own for that one suspended instant, he knows them. John has seen those eyes in his dreams and his nightmares.

He instinctively huddles into himself, and buries his face in his hands, shaking. Sherlock's not dead, and what is John meant to do with that information? A tsunami of fury rises to breach his already weakened defences, and he raises his barricades, refusing to be swamped. And then he hears it. There's a soft scratching at the door and a deep, muffled voice growls his name.

"John," says Sherlock, when he finds the door handle won't turn and there is no response to his quiet scratches. "John, it's Sherlock, it's me, open the door."

Sherlock hears John's indrawn breath, and his small movements through the wood, but there is no further response.

"John, can you hear me? It's Sherlock. I'm sorry I startled you – I didn't know there was anybody here. John, will you open the door? I really do want to see you." He taps the door quietly, but he's sure John can hear him perfectly well.

Frustrated, he raps on the door with his knuckles, assertively, but not loudly. "John," he says in a no-nonsense voice. "You're being absurd. I can understand if you're angry with me, or if your feelings are hurt, but I can explain things to you. This behaviour, John, it's childish, it's beneath you. Dammit, John, open the door!"

Sherlock's getting angry. He thumps the door loudly with his fists. " John!" he yells. "Enough! You've made your point! I know you're angry but hiding in the bathroom is not reasonable! You're surely not _frightened_! I'm not a ghost, if that's your problem!" He laughs, but it dies away when John still doesn't speak.

The door remains closed.

"All right then, you idiot!" Sherlock shouts at the door, thumping it one last time and kicking it for good measure, hurting his unshod foot. "Ow! Just stay there!"

He goes back to the fireplace, head swimming with fever and pique, sits down on the floor, leans against the bed. His anger and frustration have warmed him considerably, he's no longer cold. But Sherlock is exhausted, he hasn't eaten for almost three days, his long, cold walk has taken its toll, his leg hurts and he feels overheated and giddy. Emotional turbulence beyond his experience has his head spinning, his eyes pricking with frustrated, helpless tears. He wants to see John so much it hurts. He rests his head on his drawn up knees, breathing shakily, and closes his eyes. Sleep claims him in seconds.

John feels the vibrations of the door under Sherlock's heavy blows and is outraged. Sherlock has no right to force John to see him or speak to him. As far as he's concerned, Sherlock died when John saw him die, and John has dealt with his death. Not very well, maybe, but he _has dealt_ with Sherlock being gone. No clever explanations of how the trick was performed will bring him back. This Sherlock, no matter what his story, no matter what he's been doing, is not his friend. John wants no part of him.

Right then. Time to deal with this situation. John stands, throws his shoulders back and opens the door.

Sherlock's huddled into himself, sitting on the floor in front of the hearth. The flickering light of the flames picks out his features, here an auburn tint, there a hollow cheek. He's sound asleep, and John is grateful for that, at least.

Moving as quietly as he can he sends an email to Mycroft.

_Your brother, Sherlock, arrived here about 90 minutes ago. Obviously not dead. He is asleep at the moment. Now is when I hold you to your promise to fly me out of here._

John looks over at the hearth, trying to avoid looking at Sherlock. The blaze has died down and John needs to feed the fire, but really doesn't want to wake the man. If he can just get out of here asap he won't have to speak to him, listen to him. Instead he turns up the aircon and pulls on another jumper as he checks his email.

_John. Visibility too poor tonight – snow forecast for most of tomorrow. Will try to get you out asap._

John is surprised that Mycroft's first thought is for John, not Sherlock. John responds immediately: _Please do. I accept this was unexpected but it is also intolerable._

Mycroft is obviously waiting for John to answer. He replies: _I hope you know this is a surprise to me as well, John. _

_Yes, Mycroft. I do know. It is unforgiveable of Sherlock. I hope you're okay._

_ Yes John. _Four minutes pass, then: _How is he? Does he need anything?_

_ Mycroft, I neither know nor care. Not my area. Just get me out as soon as you can._

_ I apologise, John. Will do. _

Sherlock is awake. "Is Mycroft still there?"

John remembers his uncanny knowingness. Is not interested. "I don't think so," he says, expressionless.

"Is he coming to see us?"

"He will be sending for _me_ as soon as the weather clears," says John. "I don't know what arrangements he'll make with you."

Sherlock shivers, whether from fever or chill or the coldness of John he couldn't tell you. For the first time ever he can't read John. They have been apart too long, too many things have happened to them individually for them to have much in common, apart from the things John won't discuss.

"John," he says, tentatively. "It's good to see you."

He waits for John to answer. He doesn't.

Sherlock tries again. "I missed you."

John is silent.

Sherlock starts to get angry. He's doing all he can to offer his friendship to John, to patch things up, and John is being very childish. Also, he is feeling most unwell, his head spinning like he has vertigo, he can't decide whether he's freezing or roasting and he can't understand why John is here anyway.

"You're being most unhelpful, John," he chides. "Sulking like a toddler, tattling to Mycroft – I wasn't going to tell him straight away." He closes his eyes, dizzily, raises one long white hand and palms his forehead.

John can't help the outraged breath he draws, and Sherlock's eyes snap to him immediately, defensively. Sherlock _won't_ be made to feel guilty, or vulnerable. He goes on the offensive.

"And just why is Doctor Watson here, in the Holmes' hunting lodge, hmmm?' he sneers. "Develop a little habit, while I was gone, did you? Now, what substance did you find so appealing? It wasn't coke or smack – you're not imaginative enough for that, and it's too illegal, so...let's see. Prescription drugs, John? But no," he mused. "Too much of an abuse of your professional ethics...so what does that leave? Ah, followed the example of your sodden sister, did you? John, John, Joh..."

"Yes, Sherlock," John says, briskly conversational. "I'm here because Mycroft very kindly gave me a place to dry myself out. I'd imagine that he's done the same for you in the past – that's probably why he thought of it. And do you know, this is the first real challenge I've had to face since I got sober, and I don't feel I need a drink in order to cope. So thank you, Sherlock, you've done me an enormous favour tonight."

"John...Can't we..."

"I'd imagine not," John interrupts. "Now, I am going to build the fire right up, as I usually do, then I'm going to read in bed. You can sleep in the armchair – that's if you do sleep. There're blankets in the wooden chest – but then, I don't really need to tell you – you could tell me, right? It's your place. After tomorrow the whole place will be yours again. There's food in the linen press if you're hungry."

He kneels down beside Sherlock, choosing the right thickness of wood to keep the fire going, feeding the flames piece by piece. Suddenly there is a hand on his shoulder. He goes still.

"John," says Sherlock, and it sounds like a plea. "Aren't you even a little pleased to see me?"

John gets up, Sherlock's hand dropping as he does so. "I don't even know who 'you' are," he says.

"Don't be dull, John, of course you do," Sherlock protests "I'm Sherlock, I'm your friend."

"You're not the Sherlock I knew," John tells him. "My _friend_ Sherlock never existed – I only found that out when he died. My friend Sherlock, who I thought cared about me, could not have done that to me; made me watch, hurt me so badly. That Sherlock Holmes really did die in front of me. Whoever you are, you're nothing to do with me. I don't know you, I don't want to." He looks at Sherlock with eyes devoid of emotion, and Sherlock can feel it, the coldness of John. It chills him more than the long walk ever did.

Sherlock lowers his eyes, determined not to show the hurt in them. This is not how he's imagined his reunion with John. He wishes he could have prepared himself, spied out the lay of the land, seen John in their flat with its familiar surroundings and the noise of Baker Street filtering through. There, Sherlock might have had time to plan his words, and maybe Baker Street would have argued noisily on his behalf. Here the only sounds are the crackle of the fire, their voices and their breathing. Sherlock's breathing is ragged with strain, but John has himself completely under control now. His breath is steady and calm.

Sherlock can see that it's much too late for explanations, for forgiveness. He can see, just by looking at John, how much damage he's done to his friend, and he couldn't bear to cause any more. Better if he just vanishes again. In actuality, this time.

"My apologies, John," he says quietly. "I didn't know you'd be here, I just...I just needed somewhere to stay." He takes a long breath, fighting another wave of dizziness, and puts his head back down on his knees. "I'll go tomorrow," he tells John. "If I could just stay the night...I know it's inconvenient but..."

"Of course you can stay here, Sherlock," John says, flatly. "The place does belong to you, after all. If you like you can email Mycroft and order the helicopter to come and get you, but he's getting me out first. The weather's too bad at the moment. When I told him you were here, he was concerned for you. Don't you think it's beyond even _your_ level of inhumanity not to have told him yourself?"

"I haven't told _anybody_, John," he says, looking at his former friend with exhausted eyes in a gaunt, colourless face, all cheekbones and sockets. "I don't have anything, no money, no phone," he waves a hand over himself. "What you see is all there is now, and I don't know whether the police are still likely to arrest me if I go back to London. This is where I've always come when things...this is where I've always ... it seemed the obvious place to aim for."

"You won't be arrested," says John. "Lestrade has cleared your name. Don't know why he bothered really – it's not like anyone knew you were coming back or anything. I couldn't see why proving you weren't a fraud was important," he shrugs. "Nobody else cares one way or the other."

Sherlock can't listen anymore – it's too much for him. For a moment he wishes he _had _fallen to his death, it could have been no more painful than this. He's too dispirited to even attempt explanations. He feels quite sure John will never listen to him anyway. And his brain feels overheated and swollen, he's shivering uncontrollably and all his joints are floppy, like an unstrung puppet's. His thigh throbs with every pulse of his blood. He lowers his head again and closes his eyes. He hears John walk away, the rustle of sheets as he climbs into bed. Sherlock dozes in a kind of suspended state, shivering and sweating by turn. Occasionally he segues into a state of hyper awareness, and then he can hear John's breath and the small papery sounds of pages being turned. When that noise stops, an indeterminate time later, he knows John's asleep. To the sound of his gentle, steady breathing, Sherlock sits and watches the fire, occasionally feeding it larger chunks of wood. He must get warm – even here, right in front of the blaze, he still feels cold.

* * *

Sherlock crouches over John's prostrate form. John is trussed with strong, thin cords which bind him like a straightjacket and tether him to the floor. Sherlock has John's chest open, the ribs straining to contain his lungs as he gasps for air. John looks straight into his glazed, bloody eyes. Sherlock's pointed teeth line his ever-widening maw, and something black and viscous drips from them. He has ripped John's heart right out of him, and bites into it like an apple. "I owe you, John," Sherlock slurs around his mouthful, "I owe you." He holds his coat open and John can see that in Sherlock's own exposed ribcage, his heart has been shrivelled into a lump of charcoal. He pulls it out of his chest. "It's for you, John," Sherlock whispers, thickly. "I've got yours, it's only fair." His blood-filled mouth stretches again and John watches as he bites another chunk out of his heart. He tries to speak, to stop Sherlock, but his voice is as faint as the breath of a kitten and he can't make himself heard.

"Delicious, John," Sherlock says, swallowing the last bite, and licking the blood from his mouth, a trace left on his full upper lip. "Now, let's see what other goodies you've got stashed away in there." He grasps the ragged sides of John's mangled chest and begins to tear them apart, opening John further, and "Nonononononono!" screams John, thrashing against his restraints, but "_John_ ," he hears, an agitated voice, "_John, wake up._" And he opens his eyes to Sherlock, firelit, crouching over him, shaking John roughly and trying to disentangle him from the sheets which are wound hectically around him, confining him to the bed. "John, stop struggling! You'll hurt yourself!" He straddles John, grabs his fists and forces them down beside him onto the bed, immobilising him.

For a hummingbird's wingbeat, John can't differentiate between his dream and reality. Only when he sees Sherlock's mouth, _sans_ shark's teeth, and his own chest, entire, and can feel the rapid pulse of his own heart, does he stop fighting. Sherlock gazes with eyes that glitter silverly in the firelight, straight into John's. He sees John's return to the real world, and releases his hands. John pushes the twisted sheets and blankets off his legs and sits up, violently shoving Sherlock away from him and onto the floor.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" he yells, and Sherlock almost welcomes the rage in John's voice. Sherlock's used to John being angry with him. It's the emotionless iciness he can't cope with.

"You were dreaming," he says, reasonably. "You were upset. I just wanted to help."

"You just wanted. To help." John's eyes are dark as obsidian, and just as hard. "You know what would really help, Sherlock? It would really help if you could borrow the TARDIS and go back to that roof top and fucking not jump off it."

"I've told you I'm sorr..."

"Actually, what would really help is if you could use that same TARDIS to go back and make sure you're nowhere near St Barts on the day I met you. Actually, no, don't stop me - I'm on a roll here - you know what would be the very best way you could help me, Sherlock?" John is implacable.

Sherlock shakes his head, no.

"The very best way for you to help me would be to go back in time, to before whatever unholy act your parents participated in which led to your conception, and stop them! Sherlock – it would be incredibly helpful if you'd just never been born!"

Sherlock bows his head, unable to look at John. A moment of silence, then Sherlock, subdued, "For me, too, John, I assure you."

It's at that moment that things change. First the aircon stops, causing a noticeable lessening of ambient sound, then into the silence of its ceasing come howls of wind from outside. John leaps from the bed, crosses to the window. Already the room is growing colder.

Outside is a heavy snow storm, he can see barely two metres in front of him, but can hear the wind as it throws snow around in no discernible pattern. His heart sinks – there is no way Mycroft can get a 'copter here. He's stuck. "Oh, great," he says. He shivers, looks over at the guttering fire. "Shit!" he yells, as he moves towards it. "Shit, shit, shit..."

On his knees again, John feeds small pieces of timber – kindling, really – into the flames to build it up. He has moved on from Sherlock, who is still on the floor on the opposite side of the bed. John knows if he can't get the fire happening he's in real trouble, especially if the power doesn't come on quickly. At that thought he races to his laptop, cursing. Sure enough, he's forgotten to charge it – it's dead to the world. "Oh fuck!"

At least the fire is lively now, though the further away from it he gets, the colder. At this stage John just gives up, decides that it would simply be easier if he just sleeps. He climbs back into the bed, pulls his pillow over his head and rolls himself up in a tight cocoon of bedclothes. He shuts his mind to Sherlock and closes his eyes.

Sherlock is still on the floor, the bed blocking the heat from the fire. He shivers constantly, not only with the cold but in reaction to John's words. Yes, anger was better than this frigid disdain, but the obvious loathing John feels for Sherlock hurts him profoundly. Sherlock's not sure he can come back from that. He curls, foetus-like, hugging himself to contain the increasingly uncontrollable pain which threatens to explode out of him, like a grenade with its pin pulled. He welcomes the cold into every cell, looking for numbness, nullity, but although physically freezing, his chest - his heart, he supposes other people would call it - feels raw and pulses with hot, bloody, agony, matched only by the wound on his thigh.

* * *

John wakes to the embers of his fire. The room is still dim, and the wind still noises around the building, through the window he can see flurries of white snow swirling through the air. He feels like he's in the centre of a snowdome.

He crouches before the fire, feeding smallwood into it and blowing encouraging breaths to coax it into life. The woodpile has shrunk considerably since yesterday – he feels a nudge of worry. What happens if the snow doesn't stop?

He tests the light switches, still no power.

The sound of movement brings his memory back with a shock. He leans over the bed. Sherlock is lying curled in on himself, rigid but for his violent shaking, and his lips are blue. His normal pallor is exaggerated by the cold – the pale skin almost translucent, except for the two hectic patches of crimson on his cheeks. The circles under his closed eyes are made darker still by his black, flickering eyelashes.

"Sherlock," says John. "Get up. You'll catch your death."

There is no reaction to his words. John leans down, impatiently, and shakes Sherlock's shoulder roughly. John feels uncomfortable, touching him. "Sherlock, wake up. Come on now, wake up."

Sherlock moans deep in his chest as John tries to raise him into a sitting position. "Christ, what have you done to yourself?" John mutters as he feels the stiffness in Sherlock's joints, the sharp bones of his shoulders. Sherlock's eyes open slightly and John waves a hand in front of them to get his attention.

"Sherlock, don't close your eyes again, you have to get up. You'll freeze there. Come on." John kneels beside him, takes hold of one of his hands to wrap his arm around John's neck. The hand is incredibly hot, the skin dry and papery. "Bloody hell!" John thinks, as he rises to his feet, Sherlock's arm draped around his shoulder. Something's badly wrong with the man. John hefts Sherlock's weight up onto the bed and stands beside him, frowning down.

Sherlock's eyes are still just open, and the glitter of fever in them reminds John of their night time encounter. Sherlock watches John's face, but doesn't seem to know who he is. His body is uncoiling from its fixed curl, his limbs straightening as he relaxes. John holds his hand, takes his pulse, which is thready, the hand way too hot for someone as cold as Sherlock should be in these conditions. He places one palm on Sherlock's forehead, then touches a cheek. Sherlock is burning like a forest fire. Yet his feet, when John touches them, are corpse-cold.

John heaps every blanket he can find on top of Sherlock, and, propping him against one shoulder, holds a glass of water to his chapped, dry lips, dribbling small amounts into his mouth. He feels uncomfortable when he finds that Sherlock is watching him, following the movement of John's eyes with his own.  
"Mycroft," Sherlock says, slurring his words, "It's all fucked up. I've ruined everything, wrecked it all. You can't fix it this time."

"Sherlock, Mycroft's not here, it's me, John."

"John," Sherlock whispers. "Mycroft, it's John. He's gone." His eyes are closed now, and his breath is halting, tremulous.

John leaves him while he sorts out the fire. There's not a great deal of wood left in the pile, and John worries that he's going to run out before the snow stops. Getting to the woodpile outside in these conditions will be difficult and dangerous.

"Sherlock," John says, "Have you been hurt lately? Wounded? You need to tell me where."

"Won't," Sherlock slurs, "'s not important. You always fuss and fuss, 'snot fair. You get to have all the fun 'cause you're older."

John isn't sure whether Sherlock is talking to him or to Mycroft.

"What are you, you daft bugger, a bloody toddler?"

Sherlock grins manically. "Daft bugger!" he giggles. "D'ja hear that Mycroft? You're a daft bugger! I told you!"

John realises he isn't going to get any sense out of Sherlock. It's obvious he has a nasty infection somewhere, and John is going to have to treat it. He wonders for a moment why he even cares, and actually ponders the question for a couple of minutes.

Okay. First, and foremost, he is a doctor. For John this is more than a profession – he is a genuine, dedicated healer, so he won't ignore anybody's sickness or injury.

Secondly, John has developed a soft spot for Mycroft, and has just discovered how much Mycroft cares about his little brother.

Third, Sherlock was once his friend – no, scrap that, not relevant. Sherlock can be useful to society. Saving him is doing the world a favour.

And John knows that Sherlock needs saving. He is very, very ill.

He adds more wood to the fire, and pushes Sherlock's blankets down to the end of the bed. Supporting Sherlock against his shoulder again, John unbuttons his shirt. He winces when he sees Sherlock's torso. Every rib defines itself, almost thrusting through Sherlock's pale skin, and his collar bones are like empty shelves.

Sherlock shivers when John slides his arm beneath his back and turns him gently, removing the shirt altogether as he does so. John can count every one of Sherlock's vertebrae, and he draws a sharp breath as he sees the many scars crisscrossing his back. Someone somewhere has done a real job on him. For the first time, John wonders where Sherlock has been, and who with, and why. He shuts down his curiosity deliberately. It's not his problem. He will not care.

The skin on Sherlock's torso is hot and flushed, but there are no open or infected wounds on his upper body. John removes Sherlock's trousers, drawing a sharp breath when he sees the deep, oozing wound on his long thigh. It looks as though it's had no medical attention at all, and all that stops it from bleeding freely is the build up of pus and the swelling of the skin immediately surrounding it.

John's well aware that septicaemia is a real danger. He has to clean and disinfect it properly if blood poisoning can even be prevented, at this late stage. From the look of the red and angry flesh he may be too late, but if he doesn't try Sherlock is likely to die. John hopes Sherlock's semi-consciousness persists, for his own sake. What John does will not be painless, but must be done.

Blessing Mycroft for his thoroughness in all things, John retrieves the medical kit he provided. Antiseptic creams and lotions, sterile bandages, broad-spectrum antibiotics, even a scalpel, nestle amongst padding and surgical thread. There are several types of painkillers, as well as adhesive patches of varying shapes and sizes. Tweezers, scissors and needles round out the collection. John is relieved; with this kit he can at least do the basics for Sherlock. He just hopes it's not too late.

He grinds up panadeine and mixes it with water, sits Sherlock up again and feeds him the mixture drop by drop. Sherlock's face screws up at the taste of the stuff and he automatically tries to fight it. John finds it laughably easy to subdue him, so weak is his opponent, but when Sherlock's eyes open and meet his, John feels uncomfortably exposed and looks away.

It takes ten minutes for Sherlock to pass out. John tourniquets his leg above the wound and lances the swollen flesh, freeing the trapped pus which seeps out of the wound. John wipes it away with sterile swabs and puts pressure on the cut to relieve the underlying inflammation. At least the wound doesn't smell bad – he's been worried about gangrene. He removes the tourniquet – no need for it now.

He presses into the wound again, squeezing the fluid out until all that comes out is clean red blood. He swabs again, making sure there is no sign of further infection, and stitches the jagged edges of the wound together. He hasn't been able to identify the nature of the wound, just that it involved puncture and tearing. Wiping it yet again and applying an antiseptic salve to the now sutured wound, he bandages the whole thigh firmly.

Sherlock shifts uncomfortably several times during the procedure, but remains unconscious. John spreads blankets over him again and makes sure his head is semi-raised on the pillow so he won't choke if he vomits.

Stopping to feed the fire from the rapidly depleting woodpile, John automatically checks that the power's still out. It is. He sighs, then resignedly opens the front door, shutting it again behind him.

The snow is still whirling dervishly around him. He can't see the woodpile through it, but thinks he can remember where it's located. He goes back inside and fetches the rope he found coiled and hanging inside the utility cupboard.

John ties one end of the rope around his waist, and steps outside again. He secures the rope's other end to the porch and sets off in what he hopes is the right direction. He trudges ankle deep through the snow. The cold's incredible and within a minute at most he's shaking, hunched in on himself.  
After five minutes, John realises he's in trouble. The landscape has changed and the wood is not where he visualised it. He's too cold to explore in other directions – he needs to get inside asap. Re-entering the lodge he shuts the door against the wind and the snow. He looks at the fire, which he's beginning to think of as an insatiable creature. Its last feed has given it new energy but he calculates worriedly just how long it will last given only the limited firewood inside. He shrugs. There is only so far he can change things, and he's been in worse situations than this.

Sherlock is still asleep, buried under multiple bedclothes. John, cross-legged before the fire, opens "The Book Thief" and loses himself for a couple of hours, checking Sherlock's temperature and pulse regularly, and sparingly supplying fuel for the fire-beast.

* * *

Sherlock wakes to an almost unbearable pain in his leg. He groans as he tries to flex his foot – the pain leaves his nerves raw. The sound brings John to his feet and he turns down the blankets to have a look at his own handiwork.

The bandage is still clean – a good sign. John reaches for his thermometer. "Open, please," he says, and puts it under Sherlock's tongue. John's fingers are firm against Sherlock's wrist as takes his pulse. He removes the thermometer, looks at the result.

"Good," he says briskly. "Still a bit too warm, pulse a bit irregular, but the signs are much better."

Sherlock's eyes haven't left John's face since he woke up. He smiles tentatively. "That's good, John," he says. "Thank you."

"What happened to your leg?" John asks, in a doctorly way.

"Harpoon," says Sherlock. "Russia." He draws a shaky breath, as if uncomfortable with the memory.

"Of course," says John, uninterested. "That would explain it. You're very lucky you got here in time. And that your brother thought of antibiotics for the medikit. That infection was a potential killer."

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Bloody Mycroft," he says.

"Bloody Mycroft has been mourning your death, Sherlock. " John snaps. "He's your brother, for fuck's sake. Could you not perhaps bury the hatchet and be a little human towards him?"

"What about you, John?" Sherlock asks, "Did you mourn me? Miss me?"

"How I felt is no longer relevant," John tells him, handing him the antibiotic caplet, an analgaesic tablet and a glass of water, "since it was all based on lies. Wasted emotion, wasted time. An illusion. Now, drink this, and then try to sleep again."

"Sleep is b..."

"Boring, yeah, so I've been told. You can't possibly imagine just how much I don't give a rat's. Either way, asleep or awake, you don't leave the bed. I spent hours repairing your leg. Pull the stitches and I will be seriously put out."

John turns, then, and replaces the equipment in the medikit. He feeds the fire, sparingly, and looks out of the window again. It seems to him that the snow has eased a little. He's almost sure that he can see the vague shape of the woodheap.

He retrieves the rope and opens the door to leave.

"Where are you going, John?" Sherlock asks, anxiously. "Please don't go away."

"We need wood," John tells him.

"John, you can't possibly go out in this weather! What if you get lost? What will happen to me if you leave me?"

"And there we have it," John laughs, looking at Sherlock with amused disgust. "What will happen to _you_ if something happens to _me_? Thank you so much for your heartfelt concern for my welfare, it's overwhelming."

John closes the door behind him, tethers himself to the porch again and sets out. He was right, the snow has thinned out, although it's still very deep on the ground, and the air is arctic. John puffs warm air up from his mouth to warm the upper part of his face. His hands are clenched under his armpits. Within minutes he reaches the near end of the wood store. There's nothing he can carry the timber back in. He stuffs smaller bits in the pockets of his jacket, and loads himself with two or three of the larger logs – it's all he can carry. Once inside he stacks them up against the wall again, and goes out for more.

Four times John repeats the process, until darkness is falling and he can't see clearly enough for safety. He is also bothered b y the fact that the rope isn't long enough for him to reach the whole woodheap, only the end closest to the lodge. Still, he thinks there's enough now, if he uses it sparingly, to keep the place heated for the next couple of days, and hopefully the weather will have cleared soon to the extent that Mycroft can fly him out of here.

Gratefully John sits by the fire, warming his hands and blowing steamy breath out of his cold-reddened nostrils. He can feel the stiffness in his joints thawing as he warms, and he sighs blissfully to be out of the weather.

Sherlock has not spoken to him since John's first foray outside, though he barely ever looks away from him. John is vaguely aware of his intense gaze but ignores Sherlock until he checks his condition again. Pulse, temperature, getting better, and he tells Sherlock he is pleased with his progress.

"John," Sherlock says, softly, "I didn't explain very well...it wasn't me I was worried abou..."

"Fine, Sherlock, don't stress – it's all good. Wake me if your leg pains you or you feel sick."

Sherlock sighs as John wraps himself up in a blanket – he leaves all the others for Sherlock's use – pulls a pillow over his head and rolls himself into a tight ball on the floor in front of the fire. Within seconds Sherlock can hear him breathing lightly in sleep. He himself is wide awake, and instead of trying to sleep he watches John, what he can see of him all wrapped up as he is. It's not Sherlock's leg that hurts him, murders the possibility of sleep, it's the knowledge that he's lost his best (his only) friend and that nothing he can say or do will bring him back. Sherlock's throat hurts in a way that he remembers from childhood, before he taught himself not to cry when other kids called him names. He remembers, with absolute longing, how much of a friend John was – the way he admired Sherlock, and showed his feelings and looked after him and told him when things were a bit not good. God, how many times since his own death has Sherlock truly needed John, his infallible moral lodestar.

But Sherlock also knows he's dredged depths beyond plumbing since he left, and 'a bit not good' is more like a child's nursery rhyme than anything he's seen and done recently. He doubts anybody, much less John, would have believed him an innocent before he died, but Sherlock can compare the clean, incisive, _certain_ soul he once possessed, with the compromised, bloody, besmirched one he's returned to life with, and he mourns his former self with a gnawing grief.

Because Moriarty, after all, has won.

Every corrupt act, every killing, every lie necessitated by the domino reaction set in motion by Moriarty has brought Sherlock to this point, the knowledge that he will never, now, be fit for human companionship. That honesty will never be an option for him if he doesn't want people to see how tainted he is. If even John has given up on him, he knows he'll be alone for the rest of his life...

He recognises that in trying to protect John, he's lost him.

Sherlock shakes his head, trying to avoid his own thoughts as though they are mosquitoes, pestiferous, persistent.

He notices that the fire is waning. John will be cold, with just that blanket around him. Despite John telling him to stay in bed, Sherlock gets up. He gingerly puts his weight on the injured leg and finds that it will bear him. He limps over to the firewood John stacked earlier and chooses four large lengths, carries them one by one, trying not to wake John, and puts them in the fireplace. John murmurs something unintelligible and humps his pillow tighter over his head. Sherlock lets out his held breath as he gets back into bed. He goes back to simply sitting, leaning against the wall and watching John sleep.

* * *

John wakes to a blazing fire, his sweat trapped against his pores by the blanket which completely swaddles him. Shit, it's so hot! He sits up, a bit stiffly, his hip reacting to the hard floor despite the warmth. As his mind clears itself of the haze of sleep he gives more attention to the fire. Then he looks at the wood he so laboriously gathered and stacked. A good third of it's gone.

"Sherlock," he says, tightly, looking round at the man in the bed behind him. "What have you done?"

"I only got up once," Sherlock tells him. "I know you said to stay in bed, but I was careful. You were cold so I built up the fire."

"You built up the fire, Sherlock? You've built the Towering fucking Inferno! How much bloody wood have you wasted? Do you know what I went through to get it? Look out the fucking window, Sherlock, am I going to have to go out again in that?" John asks, dangerously. "Why would you burn so much?"

"I told you, John. You were cold. You're my friend – I wanted to help." Sherlock can't even look at John, somehow his friendly, well-meaning gesture has become contentious, and he doesn't understand the how and why of it.

"I'm sorry, John, I just thought more wood would be hotter. We always had big fires in here. I wasn't thinking about conserving fuel. I apologise for my shortsightedness."

"Right, now listen! First, I'm not your friend. Friends don't treat each other the way you treated me. We owe each other precisely nothing, and I thought we'd established that your help is neither required nor welcome. Do me a favour, Sherlock, don't do me any fucking favours from now on. We'd better just hope the weather clears soon, because if it doesn't we're in trouble. Apart from the problem of staying warm – which you have so cleverly solved by lessening our fuel, thereby hastening our imminent death by freezing– there is also the simple likelihood that by the time Mycroft can get me out I'll have bloody murdered you."

"I'm sor..."

"Yeah, no shit Sherlock, you're sorry, I know. Shut up about it, please. Just shut the fuck up."

Sherlock swallows his words. He feels he has no right to inflict himself on John. It's to be expected that his company is unwelcome and repugnant. He leans back against the wall, trying to efface himself, disappear from John's consciousness. It seems to work – John ignores him completely as he goes about his business.

And yet...when John makes tea in the tin billy he suspends over the fire, he pours a cup for Sherlock, leaving it beside the bed. When John puts together his own meal, he does the same for Sherlock, though he doesn't say anything or acknowledge him in any other way.

Sherlock gravely, courteously thanks him, and drinks the tea gratefully, his memory pulling up the many files which connect him to John via _camellia sinensis_, soothing him in his unhappiness. Sherlock has learned through bitter experience that memories can stand in for present reality, when the latter is too painful to deal with. He tries to eat, if only to please John, who used constantly to try to feed him, but he can't cope with more than a mouthful. He leaves the rest, and he sees John notice it, but John makes no comment, does not care. The empty feeling inside Sherlock, the void that just keeps expanding, has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with a gaping lack of John's friendship. John used to fill Sherlock's empty spaces with enthusiasm and admiration and affection – above all else, affection – and now, with his withdrawal, Sherlock is left alone and lonely. He has spent so long being both, has dreamed of an end to it, and is devastated by his failure to reconnect with the only person he truly cares for.

John checks Sherlock's temperature and pulse, and unbandages his leg to see how it's healing. He gives a satisfied grunt and changes the dressing with gentle hands, Sherlock desperately controlling his movements and his breath so he doesn't disturb John, doesn't importune him. Doesn't scare him off.

* * *

John is disquieted. Since Sherlock arrived, he's barely thought about the man, other than to treat his wound. Well, he has _reacted_ to Sherlock. With irritation and frustration. Nothing new there, then. But he hasn't thought at all about what it means that Sherlock has resurrected himself. As far as John's concerned, Sherlock might just as well have carked it, or so he's been telling himself. But now, his thoughts intrude and unsettle his mind. He tries to shut them down but his internal voice will not be mute.

He reaches for his book, and sneaks a look at Sherlock as he turns. Sherlock is asleep, curled on his side again, his hair spilling over his forehead and the pillow, eyes darting beneath his closed lids as he dreams. His breathing can barely be heard. John maps Sherlock's face – although always thin and bony, he could take up residence on the mantelpiece these days, beside the skull. His skin is stretched like parchment, pale as the ivory of a mediaeval icon. John can see something of Sherlock's experiences in his visage – there are lines that weren't there before his death, and his default expression is melancholy, and, when he's awake, wary. John discovers that he is curious about Sherlock's wariness – it's new. He's lost his arrogance. John wonders, despite himself, what exactly has happened to Sherlock to cut him down so dramatically.

And then Sherlock sighs, and tucks a hand beneath his chin, and suddenly John's furious again, seething with rage against the man and despising himself for his lack of self control. Because what's the point? So the man is back, so he didn't die, so John's grief and hatred and anger were so much hot air, wasting his energy, his feelings. Nothing has really changed – same feelings, same object, different reason. John closes his eyes, breathes deeply, calms himself, everything's fine. He will not waste any more of himself on Sherlock Holmes. He is right to keep himself away from the man who hurt him so badly. All John has to do, to reinforce his detachment, is to remember the pulse-less hand he held in utter devastation in the street below Sherlock's launch pad, and his subsequent self destruction as he blamed himself for failing his friend. To discover that all that pain could have been avoided if Sherlock had been honest with him just compounds the wrong. But that was always Sherlock's way – split second decisions that John just had to go with, or get left behind. This time, the most crucial time, he hadn't even been given a choice.

Now he turns his back towards Sherlock and opens his book. He notices the fire needs refreshing, and, regretfully, adds another largish piece of wood, aware of the dwindling stack and knowing that he is going to have to visit the woodheap again.

When Sherlock wakes from his always disturbed sleep it is dark outside, and the wind howls, almost drowning the crackle of the fire. John is cocooned again in his blanket on the floor, and the fire is almost down to the embers. The firewood pile has shrunk even further, and although Sherlock's anxious not to do the wrong thing again he really believes that the fire needs to be fed and stoked. This time he places only one of the precious logs in the fireplace before limping over to the window and looking out. While it is dark indeed beyond the glass, he can see the giddy swirl of the snow. It makes him dizzy.

Sherlock stays awake, though he's still tired – he's never slept so much before, but after all he did come here to recuperate and regroup. John's presence here was a surprise, and Sherlock's still not sure what kind. He watches John, unwilling to leave him asleep before a dying fire. He watches the flames just as carefully, and even though he dreads John's reaction, he feeds them another log to bring up the blaze. And John wakes and catches him doing so.

John's anger awakens with him, as he eyes the depleted supply of wood. He won't even look at Sherlock, he's afraid he'll hit him if he does.

"The fire was going out, John," says Sherlock, anxiously. "I didn't have a choice."

John holds his rage inside, with difficulty. He sits and glares at the fireplace . He knows he's going to have to go outside for more wood, and the thought horrifies him. "Sherlock," he growls. The tone of his voice confirms Sherlock's knowledge of John's disgust with him. "The rope I used when I went out for wood – is that all there is? I've had a pretty close look and can't find any more. This is your place – do you know where I might find another length?"

"I'm sorry, John, but no. I can't think of any." Sherlock finds it most unfair that yet again he must apologise.

John sighs. He can't go yet – it's too dark. He rolls himself back up and goes back to sleep.

Sherlock's always amazed at John's capacity to just blink himself into unconsciousness. He supposes it's a skill learnt of necessity during his army days. He himself has spent months snatching what little sleep he could at rare moments of relative safety and even though he knows he's secure now he can't break the habit. His dreams disturb him and he's uncomfortable suspending his mind in unconsciousness. He resents John's sleep cycle - how can Sherlock talk to John if he's asleep every time Sherlock's awake?

But what can he say, anyhow?

And don't actions speak louder...?

When the world outside the window grows lighter, Sherlock ties himself to the porch and moves through silently flying snow, heading to the woodpile.

* * *

John dreams that Sherlock is dead and his feelings are as raw as they were when Sherlock died the first time. Horror-stricken anguish overwhelms his sleeping mind and he wakes with a jolt. Instinctively the first thing he does is look for Sherlock, who is not in the bed, or the bathroom, or anywhere obvious. Then John sees that the rope he had neatly coiled and left beside the woodheap is gone.

Oh fuck, he thinks, as he opens the front door. He sees the rope, tied to the furthest veranda post and grips it to feel its tension. It is relatively tight, and he begins to follow it, hand over hand, looking for the idiot on the other end. He loudly yells Sherlock's name, though the noise is muffled by the snow and the wind. There is no movement thrumming down the rope to John's hands and he is suddenly deeply afraid, although he does not stop to examine his feelings. Next moment he sees Sherlock's coat crumpled on the ground. He calls out again and stoops to pick it up, to find that Sherlock's coat still has Sherlock in it. There are five logs scattered around him and John can't wake him, even when he lifts him in a fireman's hold and, limping, carries him back to the lodge.

John lays him down on the bed again, and strips off his sodden, freezing clothes. He checks the injured leg – no further damage there, but Sherlock's lips are blue and he's shaking with cold. John strips Sherlock's gloves and boots off, then his cold clothing, wet with snow. He follows them with his own. He puts the last logs in the fire, wraps every blanket around Sherlock, and pushes the bed as close to the fire as is safe. Divested of most of his own wet garments, he climbs onto the bed, inserts himself into the pile of blankets that is Sherlock, and leans against him, wrapping an arm around Sherlock's skinny, cold body, doing his best to warm him up, chafing his hands. Because, for whatever reason (and again, he will not examine why), John does not want a hypothermic Sherlock.

John is also cold, but their combined bodyheat, the bedclothes and the now blazing fire, soon warm him up, and Sherlock's tremors turn to shivers, and then disappear altogether. John tries to wake him, calling his name and squeezing his shoulder, chafing his cold hands, but he is rewarded only by some sotto voce muttering. He knows he should stay awake, that he should wake Sherlock up, that lethargy and sleepiness could indicate hypothermia, but John is exhausted and nods off very quickly.

He wakes to heated skin and the smell of unwashed male. He is only half awake when he looks straight into a pair of almost black eyes, gazing intensely into his. John's eyes fly open, shocked, and his expression wipes Sherlock's face blank, save for that wariness that never seems to leave his features these days.

John distinctly remembers putting an arm around Sherlock before falling asleep, so he doesn't really understand how he's wound up leaning against Sherlock, with Sherlock's arms around him, and his head resting on Sherlock's shoulder, looking into Sherlock's face. Can't quite work out how his legs are bracketed by Sherlock's. Is dismayed by his own reaction to Sherlock's eyes, and his smell, and – oh god –is that? It is... Sherlock's erection. John all but throws himself out of bed, becoming embarrassingly aware of his own.

He cannot look at Sherlock. He feels betrayed by his own body and deeply humiliated, but he blames Sherlock – he _must_ have caused this, John's body is _reacting _to Sherlock.

"John," Sherlock says, in a voice clearly meant to soothe, "it's nothing, you know this, it's fine..."

John recalls their early 'married to my work' conversation. "No, Sherlock," he says, "it's not all fine. I'm not like that, I don't do this and what do you mean I _know_ this?!"

"I..." Sherlock is bewildered, "I only mean you're a _doctor_, John, you _know_ about antemeridian tumescence in normal adult males...surely you're not embarrassed? How on earth did you cope as a soldier?"

For a moment John is transported back to his pre-fall relationship with Sherlock – for the first time since Sherlock's return there is that patronising, amused voice he knows so well, and it goes straight to his heart. There's a split-second of joyous recognition "It's Sherlock!" overridden deliberately, automatically by his well-trained brain, Pavlovian in its association of Sherlock = no.

And John turns on Sherlock and spits his words at him, like bullets, "Normal males, Sherlock? Do tell me, when exactly did you become a _normal_ male? Because as far as I ever saw, the only time you ever even remotely approached getting your jollies with was that _other_ freak, Irene Adler!" He grabs his clothes from the floor and slams the bathroom door behind him, already cold.

All Sherlock can hear is the word 'freak', spoken by the one voice he'd never expected it from, and it breaks him a little more inside. He gathers his own clothes, which have dried in front of the fire, and dresses.

He recalls not ten minutes ago, holding John against himself to keep them both warm. It was the least he could do for the man who had undoubtedly saved his life again, and with even less reason than he'd had when he'd shot the cabbie all that time ago. Sherlock had awakened to find John's arm around him, John's head lying heavily against his own. He couldn't have been comfortable, he was snoring slightly, to Sherlock's affectionate amusement. Sherlock had shifted about, trying to find a comfortable position for himself – appreciating John's arm but too tall for it, having to kind of stoop to fit under there and not wanting to wake John up. He'd worked out, in advance, minute incremental undulations which would allow him to attain his objective. Once appropriately positioned, he held John in his arms, and watched the man sleep. It truly was fascinating, and he wondered for the googolplexth time just why that was.

And then John had nestled his head into Sherlock's shoulder, face tilted towards him, and he'd whispered something that sounded like 'Shhhh', into Sherlock's face and Sherlock had stroked John's hair just once, so lightly, with such a rush of affection...and John's eyes had opened (had Sherlock's touch roused him?) and for one second they had recognised Sherlock's with warmth and greeting. Before they had widened in recognition with anger, and worse, disgust.

Sherlock disgusts John. He _disgusts_ him! Sherlock sits on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands as the bathroom door and the front door are flung violently open in rapid succession, John kicks the latter one shut loudly and Sherlock hears his heavy boots striding across the wooden floor of the porch. Then, nothing.

* * *

John ties the rope around his ankle – it's struck him that this will allow him more leeway than binding his waist with it has previously done. It's bitterly cold, and the snow is as hard to see through as static on a television, but John welcomes the clarity of sensation it brings with it. The wood Sherlock had gathered and dropped on his ill-timed expedition looms at his feet, and he pauses in his journey to stack it so the snow won't cover it before he can pick it up himself. The woodpile is not much further, and John manages to add another half a dozen logs to Sherlock's pile before the rope runs out of stretch. John dumps the first load on the porch and goes back for the next. This time, when he reaches the porch, the first load is gone. Sherlock has carried it in.

On his way back for another load he thinks again about Sherlock, recalling with discomfort the look in Sherlock's eyes, pupils widened till the irises were pale, thin bands around them. The way they'd focused on his. The momentary longing in them before Sherlock blinked it away. Despite the cold air, crisp in his nostrils, he is sure he can smell Sherlock on his own skin, his loins registering the distinctive, sweaty scent, just as their muscle memory records his own and Sherlock's erections. John hates himself for his pathetic reaction to the man who wiped out a year of John's life, turned him into a different, lesser being, and has come back to inspect the damage. He remembers the moment Sherlock fell, the frozen nanosecond wherein all possibilities in their relationship were recognised and obliterated. John has never, since (or even then, really), allowed himself to think of Sherlock in a sexual way.

By the time John has fetched the last of the wood, he is cold again, his hands and feet numb. Sherlock has fed the fire just enough wood to maintain a pretty decent blaze and John sits before it, thawing. He looks at Sherlock and thanks him politely for carrying the wood inside, as he would thank any earnest, helpful child, and Sherlock's lips twitch up in a wistful smile. "That's fine, John," he says in a small voice. John contemplates the fire, aware all the time of Sherlock's intense gaze on him. His hackles rise slightly, and he shivers, this time not with the cold.

Sherlock can't look away from John – he's tried and failed. Wherever John is, he draws Sherlock's eyes to him, and he's not even embarrassed about it. Sherlock understands that soon he won't have John to look at; he needs to store enough of the man to last him for whatever Johnless future awaits him. Regardless of John's waking reaction to Sherlock this morning, which of course he'd rather have had happen differently, Sherlock treasures greedily every memory of holding John, asleep, against himself.

John inspects Sherlock's wound again. His misadventure in the snow has not affected it – the flesh is healing well and there is no inflammation. Sherlock thanks him gravely. "I'm a doctor," John tells him. "You're my patient. No need for thanks."

There's that coldness again, emanating from the man who used to be Sherlock's best friend, and though Sherlock understands no explanation is going to bring John back into his orbit, that he's lost him in every way, Sherlock needs, for his own sake, to explain himself to the man. When he hears John sigh, he decides now is the moment of truth.

"John," Sherlock says, softly. "I need to tell you why."

John shrugs, makes a noise in his throat. "You really don't," he says, brusquely.

"No, really," Sherlock continues, "I know you're angry. But for once I want to be absolutely honest with you – no games, no ulterior motives – just me talking to just you. I owe you the truth, for the sake of the friendship we had, because I know I hurt you, John, I do know that, though I didn't think it would be so badly."

"Sherlock, you don't owe me..."

"Yes, John, I do. I've owed you my life several times, and you've always had my gratitude for your tolerance and kindness, for your friendship."

"Sherl..."

"No, John, just listen."

John sighs heavily, impatiently. "I don't _want_ to hear it, Sherlock," he says.

"Well _I_ want you to listen, John," retorts Sherlock, autocratically, impatient himself. "I'll tell you just the once, because I owe it to our friendship to show you that I didn't value it lightly, nor take it for granted...John, I had to die, to disappear, you were in such danger, all because of me."

"Oh come on, Sherlock, when did _I_ ever need protection from danger? Especially _your _protection?"

"Well, shall we begin with when Moriarty wired you up?"

"I came through that one okay."

"_We_ did, yes, John," Sherlock says, "but only because Moriarty let us. He was testing my feelings and that night showed him exactly what they were...you were always my weakness, John, even while you were my strength..."

John makes a cynical noise.

"Don't dismiss my feelings quite so easily, John, please. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, jumping off that roof, and I did it for you. Moriarty meant it when he said he'd burn the heart out of me. He knew it was you, John. I couldn't risk him following through."

"Moriarty was dead before you jumped, Sherlock – I heard the shot. I saw the p.m. and the forensics reports. How could Moriarty make you fake your own suicide? He was already dead. Don't try to manipulate me, Sherlock, for whatever reason."

"He had snipers trained on you, and Lestrade, and Mrs Hudson, John. I've spent the last few months hunting them down, and their colleagues. Moriarty said if I didn't kill myself you'd all be shot. He forced me to lie to you, John, to make you think I was a liar and a fraud. He didn't care about winning the game, he just wanted _me_ to _lose_."

"Yeah, he was a sicko, all right," says John, shortly. "You were well matched. And you _had_ to have your audience, didn't you. It had to be _me_ to witness the Great Sherlock Holmes in his finest moment. Did you even think what it would _do_ to me, to see that?" his voice falters on the last word. "To know I couldn't stop you, couldn't save you?"

"Of course I thought about it, John, I planned it, choreographed, _staged _it. It _had_ to be you and you had to see it to _believe_ it. You're not a good enough actor to convincingly pretend I was dead if you knew I wasn't."

"Oh, that's just great, Sherlock! You're so _proud_ of yourself, aren't you? Such a brilliant production! And I brought it on _myself_? Is that what you're saying? That I not only wasn't trustworthy enough for you to _confide_ in, but also too dull of wit to be able to pull off a decent _bluff_? Of course, you and I never played poker, did we? Too _boring_! Spare me any more of your shit, Sherlock, I've heard _enough_!"

Sherlock winces. "Very well, John, I just wanted to explain. Thank you for hearing me."

They sit in silence again. Sherlock watches John. John watches the fire. And of course Sherlock's words worm their way into his brain and, being John, he can't ignore their rationality. Maybe he can blame Sherlock for going in without _him_, for 'saving' him when that's not what their friendship had ever been about, but Mrs Hudson...even Lestrade – John can see where dealing behind their backs might have been the better course of action. Objectively, perhaps Sherlock's protection of the others was sensible. Maybe even noble.

And being John, empathetic, _sympathetic_ John, he can't be objective about Sherlock's decision to protect John at such expense to himself. He begins to understand exactly what it must have cost Sherlock to destroy himself – his reputation, his career, his sanity - all questioned and doubted and judged, by John as well as by everyone else. For Sherlock to have engineered this state of affairs, Sherlock who so prized his intellectual superiority over the common herd (even though John was always sure that his arrogance masked his social self-consciousness and ineptitude), he must have been desperate indeed. And yeah, if he's honest with himself, maybe Sherlock's got a point about John's ability to fake his belief in Sherlock's death. Certainly anybody who had watched John's gradual self-destruction after his friend died would feel no doubt whatsoever that his grief was real.

And he allows the few remarks Sherlock's made about what he's been doing since he died to settle in his memory and calls them up, tastes them and they are bitter; wormwood and gall. "Russia – harpoon", "hunting snipers and their colleagues." There's the wound in his leg, the unhealthy thinness of him, the completely out of character concern, and humility and patience.

Sherlock can read John's posture, which has till now been stiff and tense. Now he sees John's shoulders relax slightly, can read in the impatient hand John runs through his fair hair an indecision Sherlock's not seen since his return. A log cracks noisily in the fireplace, making them both jump. It seems to bring John out of his reverie, and he leans back, coming to rest against the bed. Sherlock breathes out tension, as silently as he can, and hears John's breath catch in his throat.

"I truly did miss you, John," Sherlock says quietly. "I desperately missed your advice, your honesty - you knew about Moriarty, you tried to tell me...but it wasn't till he made me jump and I lost you so completely that I understood what you'd meant. And he won – he did burn the heart out of me. Then he turned me into a pest exterminator, John – he made me crawl in the dirt, after his filthy myrmidons, knowing if I didn't put them down there'd be no safety, not for me nor for my...people.

"I came to appreciate dull," he told John, "I came to long for boring."

John swallowed. "Yes, well, Sherlock, dull and boring were all you left me, and believe me I appreciated neither condition. But I missed you, too, Sherlock."

And he did. He remembered the sheer excitement of living with Sherlock, the Damoclesian swords that hung constantly above their heads, the danger to life and limb inherent in simply brewing tea in Sherlock's impromptu lab, otherwise known as the kitchen.

"I didn't know," Sherlock muses, "I had no idea that it would hurt you so much. I'm more used to people craving my absence than my presence. It wasn't till I saw you in the cemetery that I realised..."

"You were there?" John asks, angry, and answers himself, "you were there and you didn't speak to me."

"Yes, I was there. But I couldn't John. I couldn't tell you, or anyone else. I shouldn't even have been there. But I missed you so much. I hadn't realised..." his voice snags on the last word. John turns around, curiously and Sherlock's looking beyond him, staring into the distance, his eyes dark and wet.  
"And after all, I was glad I went, John. The words you spoke to me, asking for one more miracle, telling me I was human; they stayed with me all the time I spent groping about in the slime for Moriarty's scum."

John has never before heard Sherlock call any of his opponents names. To do so would imply value judgments, and Sherlock had always been nothing if not amoral. He was curious about them, happy to bring them down once their crimes were solved, but the case was what was important. Sherlock was never interested in what happened to them after their arrest, nor in their motives other than as clues to solutions.

"Tell me about the, what did you call them? Myrmidons," he half smiles as he asks. The term is so very Sherlock. But there is no answering smile from Sherlock.

"I don't wish to remember them," he says, soberly, and John shrugs, feeling rejected somehow. He turns back to the fire, feeds it another log.

"Okay," says John. "How's your leg feeling?"

"Sore, but bearable," Sherlock tells him, "thank you."

"Better have a look," John says, standing up. He pulls the blankets aside, exposing Sherlock's bandaged thigh.

John's hands are dry and warm. The wound is still clean and there is no inflammation. John presses his hand to Sherlock's forehead, and feels no fever. He takes his pulse, holding his wrist, resting his fingers on the pulse point.

Sherlock can barely breathe. He has never been a tactile person but this is John, whose gentle touch now breaks down the walls he has erected around himself. He suddenly grabs John's hand, holds it between both of his, caging it with his long fingers. John draws a shaky breath and tries to free his hand, but Sherlock grips it even tighter.

"John," he says, desperately. "I know it can ever be as it was, but for the sake of all we shared in the past, please forgive me."

For two beats there is silence, and then Sherlock resignedly drops John's hand.

"Why is that necessary to you?" John asks, "what does it matter now?"

"Because now is all I have," Sherlock says, urgently. "Moriarty took my, _our_ future away and that sullied the past. I had thought we would be friends all our lives and I took that, took _you, _for granted. I can't believe how complacent I was, how little I consciously valued you. He certainly showed me how wrong I'd been. You are the best of men, John, stalwart and honest, tolerant and forbearing. You constantly forgave me for anything and everything. I want you to forgive me so that I can start to forgive myself for hurting you so badly, because I can see what you have suffered. I want your forgiveness now because that way I can hold onto the past – my life before Moriarty ruined it," he corrects himself, "before I let Moriarty ruin it."

"Tell me, then, Sherlock," John says, with a long look at the man sitting in the bed, his thin hands now twisting themselves together over and over. "Tell me where you went, what you did. Tell me."

And suddenly it spills from Sherlock, in one long stream. "It's not that I won't tell you, John, it's that I _can't_. Thinking about them makes me feel so dirty. I _hate_ them, they dragged me down to their level, I was forced to tolerate what they did just to get near enough to eliminate them – they peddled children, John, drugged them and sold them, they kidnapped women and sold them for sex, they harboured violent rapists who would boast, John,_ boast_ about their disgusting exploits. They were filthy vermin, venomous parasites and I had to _kill_ them, John, and I don't know how you ever managed to sleep at night after doing the same thing in Afghanistan but I know you have nightmares about it and I do too, John, so I don't sleep and my mind palace is a slum because they're in it and I can't _delete_ them, I can't delete _any_ of it, I can't make it _stop_..."

John can't stand the self-loathing in Sherlock's voice; nobody should have to live with that. Sherlock's face is a mess of emotions and when John wraps his arms around him, he buries it in John's neck. John can feel the deep sobs which threaten but are savagely suppressed and he tightens his arms around Sherlock's thin shoulders and strokes his back, and the protrusion of his ribs and the fragile bumps of his vertebrae make him think of an injured bird he looked after when he was a kid, and the sadness of its death mixes with his pity for this damaged man, and he pulls back and kisses his forehead, because, after all, this is Sherlock ,and he's alive, and this time John can give to him all the comfort he couldn't give when he died...

Sherlock's wiry arms go around John, as he weeps hot tears, butting his head against John's neck, and he murmurs "I'm sorry, John, I'm so sorry, please forgive me."

"Shhh, Sherlock, it's alright, of _course_ I forgive you." His hand cups the back of Sherlock's head, longish tendrils of hair curling around his fingers as he holds Sherlock against himself. Sherlock shakes with reaction to the intensity of his feelings, of shame and humiliation and yes, relief. His face is buried in John's neck and he breathes the comforting smell of John in, wanting nothing but to crawl inside John's skin.

"Slide over, Sherlock, I'm getting a crick in my neck."

Sherlock scoots across the suddenly too small bed and leans against the wall. John sits beside him and holds his arm up, inviting Sherlock under its protection. Sherlock scrinches down the bed until he can rest his head against John's shoulder, and that protective arm encloses him, John's other arm coming round so that Sherlock is encircled by John.

Everything feels surreal, and John decides not to think too much about what's happening here. All he knows is that Sherlock needs his help, and hasn't John always been about caring for this man? Sherlock's tremors subside slowly, but John can feel the panicked beating of his heart and tries to soothe him, stroking his hair, trying to ground the man, to centre him - bind him like a swaddled baby. And gradually Sherlock does relax, his breathing steadier, and John finds himself actually at ease beside him. Sherlock's eyes are open but shaded by his lashes as he stares into the fire, and John can't look away. Gently he strokes the dark curls spread across his chest and refuses to think about what it all means. What he does know is that this feels right, and that for the first time in too long he isn't angry and his feeling of calm is internal – not caused by chemical or environmental influences. And just like that, John has forgiven Sherlock. He doesn't agree with everything he's done, but he sees how hard it was for him and understands that Sherlock believed he had no choice.

Sherlock rubs his cheek against John, sighing softly. He can't believe that John has welcomed him back in this way, and feels no certainty that it'll last, but while it does he wants to absorb every second, every touch, every rise and fall of John's chest that he feels beneath his cheek. The comfort of this man, warm in every sense of the word, lulls Sherlock.

When one of his long, white hands twitches against him, John realises Sherlock's fallen asleep. He closes his eyes and smells Sherlock, that scent he'd tried so hard those early days not to let fade. With his face buried in Sherlock's hair, John lets sleep take him too.

* * *

Sherlock wakes to a day he had believed could never dawn. Still lying against a softly snoring John, he savours the feelings of safety and warmth. As he comes back fully to himself (he's actually slept! Without nightmares, apparently.) he realises the warmth is entirely centred in the bed. The fire needs feeding. He slides out of bed, out from under the protective circle of John's arms, which tighten around him briefly before he carefully (John's asleep. Without nightmares, apparently.) removes himself.

As he stokes up the fire, John murmurs something and rolls over, into his usual curled position. While Sherlock understands that this is not a conscious rejection on John's part, he's disappointed (beyond measure, actually) that he can't just resume his position in John's embrace. He considers just climbing into bed and snuggling up to the warmth of John's back, wrapping arms and legs around the sleeping man, cocooning him till consciousness hatches and he wakes. But he's still stunned by John's turnaround and doesn't want to risk offending him, alienating him again. Sherlock knows he's walking on eggshells, but he sits against the bed and almost hugs himself with the memory of his own awakening. And waits for John. Who opens his eyes after hardly any time at all and says "Sherlock?"

"I'm here, John," and Sherlock moves closer.

John's immediate instinct is to invite Sherlock back to bed, but he's uncertain. He doesn't know what this is now. What _they_ are. What he is. But Sherlock smiles at him, a heartbreaking, trusting smile, a hopeful smile and John doesn't bother overthinking it all, he just lifts the blanket and moves over to make room for the man. And Sherlock feels it all, everything, in his heart, which is knitting itself back together and filling up and beating more strongly than it has since the day he died. He can hardly breathe as he slides down beside John, whose eyes and mouth smile his own welcome, and Sherlock can't help it, he turns his face to John's and rests his forehead against John's and neither of them seem able to close their eyes. And it's intense, John thinks, and more intimate than he has ever felt with any other person. And that figures, he recognises, with a wry grin, because Sherlock has been a part of John's soul from the start and John only recognised that as he watched Sherlock fall, and now the miracle he asked for months ago has been wrought and John's splintered soul is reconstructing itself with Sherlock at its centre.

So John takes the next, natural, logical step and kisses Sherlock.

He has wondered, in the past, how experienced Sherlock is sexually. Not that it matters, he just doesn't want to frighten him off. But Sherlock kisses with open mouth and questing tongue, and touches with reverence and wonder and then fierce possession, and takes and is taken by John breathlessly, gently and savagely by turns, and the day is spent learning each other and coming together in every sense.

There isn't a great deal of conversation. They keep the fire stoked and occasionally nap. Sometimes one of them feels the shock of the intensity of their need for contact with the other. The whole day has a sort of dream-like feel about it, as though all there is, in all of existence, is this lodge, this bed, them. Outside it has stopped snowing, and the wind has died, but inside sound is muffled into sighs. And night comes and they do sleep, Sherlock wrapped warmly around John.

* * *

"I'm glad you're still at 221B, John." Sherlock says as John hands his tea to him and sits down in the overstuffed armchair.

"Yeah, couldn't leave." John says. "Some crazy bastard left it to me in his will. Though I'm afraid it's a little the worse for wear. Still, I guess that's not my problem anymore. The real owner's coming back. He can clean it up."

"I meant for you to have it, John. I still do. And whether I live there or not will be up to you. I'll understand, of course, if you don't want me there..."

"I do, Sherlock, obviously I do." But even as he says it he wonders how that will be. He's been on automatic pilot really, since he kissed Sherlock. He needs to think it through – and already he's questioning his own behaviour and motives.

Sherlock moves to sit at the foot of John's chair. He leans back against John's knees and draws his own up, wincing a little from the still-sore wound. John notices.

"Are you okay, Sherlock? Is it hurting too much?"

"No, thank you, Doctor. It's fine. I'm fine." He turns to look at John. "Better than fine," he smiles. "Do you have any idea of how amazing you are?" he asks, "how extraordinary?"

"You told me that, once before," John says. "But I'm not, Sherlock. I'm just ordinary old John Watson, and the only thing about me that's ever been special is you."

John's hand finds its way to Sherlock's hair and he strokes it gently, running his fingers slowly through each strand, watching as it curls itself around the intrusion like a living thing. And suddenly John bends forward and buries his face in the stuff, breathing shakily as his eyes fill and he sobs, such deep gasps it's painful, but Sherlock is there immediately, kneeling before him, holding him tightly and rocking him, stroking his back and his neck and his hair and just shhh-ing him inarticulately, and John weeps out his grief and his shame and his self-disgust for what he had become before Mycroft brought him here. He has not let himself feel this deeply since Sherlock fell, and he lets it overflow till it's gone and he's empty of it all. Sherlock holds him till he stops crying, then pulls back and rests his lips on John's forehead.

"Whatever it was," he says gently, "whatever we were while I was gone, we can let that go."

"I can't, Sherlock," John's voice is low, but steady. "I hurt people who deserved better of me. I have to fix things and I don't know that I'll be able to. I said, did, unforgiveable things – deliberately. I've got an ugliness inside, Sherlock, and it came out and showed itself in all its destructive glory. I'm so ashamed of myself."

Sherlock shivers, reminded of the unspeakable things he had witnessed, had had to accede to while baiting his traps. "John, you have no ugliness inside or out, no matter what you feel, how you behaved. I've seen hideousness that can't be hidden, that is proudly displayed and used to distort and smear and destroy innocence and trust...God John, if it hadn't been for Irene I really _might_ have killed myself..."

"Irene?" asks John, "Irene Adler?"

"Yes," says Sherlock.

"But what do you mean? Sherlock, she's dead." Something unpleasant is uncoiling in his gut.

"John!" Sherlock exclaims, with a little laugh, "you told me she was in the witness program in the U.S.A."

"I lied," John tells him, flatly. "She was beheaded in Karachi. I didn't want to upset you, Sherlock. I knew you had feelings for her." And even though Sherlock had never really confirmed or denied his attraction to the woman, John had always suspected him of carrying an unsatisfied love, or maybe just lust, for her. How else explain the pink phone, the admiration he'd obviously felt for her mind...

And maybe for her body as well. After all she was a very fine woman. And Sherlock had memorized her figure within ten minutes of meeting her. Well, it was hard to miss.

"I knew you were lying, John. I rescued her."

And John is swamped suddenly by a sense of the ground shifting beneath him. It comes to him that everything between himself and Sherlock is based on lies. John lied to Sherlock about Irene – and now he can recognise that for what it was; he'd _wanted_ to tell his friend that Irene had left, voluntarily, because he was afraid that Sherlock would grieve for her, for a person who was simply an abstraction, who was as slippery, in her own way, as Moriarty and whose morals equalled Moriarty's in their perversity. John had been _happy_ to prove to Sherlock that Irene Adler didn't care about him, that she'd left without a backward glance. Because the knowledge of her death would have hallowed her in Sherlock's memory.

And Sherlock was dishonest with John when he didn't tell him that he'd saved the woman. He wonders about that. How did it happen? Obviously the phone had something to do with it – John remembers that obscene sigh she'd programmed into it. If that didn't tell him about her connection with Sherlock, nothing would. So how long had they been together? Where? And his thoughts come full circle, to the big one, the greatest lie, the most hurtful one. Sherlock's death. Irene obviously knew the truth about Sherlock, even before he died. He had trusted her with it. As he had not trusted John.

John drops his hands and leans away from Sherlock. Sherlock wants to lean into him, doesn't like the space which has developed between them.

"Oh," says John. "Right."

"I helped her escape." Sherlock doesn't understand why, but knows there is a need for him to explain. He tries. "She has been very useful since. She has a lively mind and a great deal of dramatic talent."

"Unlike me, then," John says, and his tone is flat. "So it was fine for _her_ to know you weren't dead."

"Yes," Sherlock agrees, "quite right, John. When I got her out of Pakistan I sent her to Russia, where I'd heard there was a thriving sex slave industry masquerading as a scheme to send mail-order brides to western countries. She was in the process of disrupting the corrupt consortium from within. I left London straight after my death and went to Russia, where she hid me until I could work out how to dismantle Moriarty's network. As it happened, one of the snipers who'd been a threat to you returned to Russia and accidentally led me straight to the orchestrators of the sex slave trade, so I was able to kill two birds with one stone."

"Right," says John, again. "Well done, you. Both of you." And Sherlock finally catches that John is unhappy.

He instantly becomes flustered. _Why_ is John unhappy?

"I didn't think you'd want to know about helping her escape," he tells John.

"You seem to spend a lot of time not telling me things you think I don't want to hear."

John is on sinking sands. Who else knew about Sherlock? How many lies have been told to him, how much truth concealed?

"Who else knew you weren't dead, Sherlock? I guess Molly has to have, she signed the p.m. Who else?"

"Nobody, John. I couldn't tell anybody, it was too dangerous for them. For me."

"But you trusted Irene?" John says, "You trusted a woman you knew was in collusion with Moriarty."

"_Had_ been, John, _had _been, but she'd left that behind."

All the doubts John had felt when Irene first slithered into their lives have raised their heads again. Sherlock had always seemed to turn a blind eye to the amorality of Irene's exploits with Moriarty; seeing her as another skilled opponent in the Great Game they played. Which had never been a game, despite Sherlock's fascination with it and the shock of needed adrenaline and sense of habitual perverse _joy_ that it brought John. At first. But that colourful house of cards had fallen with Sherlock, leaving nothing in its collapse but dreary grey.

"So all this time you knew she was alive, and were in contact with her."

"Yes, John."

"Why didn't you tell me, Sherlock?"

"Why did you tell me she was alive, when you thought she was dead?"

"Because you had feelings for her, Sherlock. You seemed so miserable when you thought she _was_ dead, when she was faking it. Mycroft and I thought you'd be happy if you thought she was alive but unavailable."

"Mycroft," Sherlock said, viciously, "is an interfering prat, always meddling in..."

John cuts him off. "Mycroft," he says, "is a good man and a caring brother, Sherlock. He made a terrible mistake, with Moriarty, as did you. Your death hurt him deeply."

"Oh, take his side, won't you," Sherlock says, petulantly, and John recognises, bittersweetly, his old, flouncing flatmate in a pout. The familiarity of it kicks him in the heart.

"There are no sides, Sherlock," John tells him, patiently. "You need to stop seeing life as a game, especially one where _you_ write the rules and break them and rewrite them to suit _you_. You _hurt_ Mycroft, Sherlock."

And John begins to question this thing that has developed between Sherlock and himself. He'd thought they were as open to each other as it was possible to be, but he understands now that even before the biggest lie of all, their relationship had been built around subterfuge, obfuscation, half-truths. How can he let himself trust this man? He thinks back to all the times Sherlock has bent the truth to suit himself, and there have been many of them. This is a man, John remembers, who had no compunction about drugging John, experimenting on him. This is Sherlock Holmes. Who once assured John that he had only one friend, and even then was trying to manipulate John into unconsciously being the subject of Sherlock's dangerous experiment.

Christ, what has John been thinking? Have a relationship with this man? Who can't even maintain a friendship with him? How could he trust Sherlock ? How can he ever again? How can he love Sherlock, touch him, sleep with him? John's survival instincts are screaming 'put on the brakes, backpedal, run!'

"Sherlock, I can't do this." John can't even look at Sherlock and Sherlock can feel it all falling away, skidding away from him, John putting distance between them that widens with every second.

"Can't do what, John?"

"I can't...be with you. Not like that."

"Regrets, John?" Sherlock sounds almost too casual about it, but he's been expecting this even since John first kissed him, even at the height of whatever they'd been doing.

"Well, not as such, Sherlock,' John tells him. "But I think it would be a mistake to continue down this road."

"Why, John?" But Sherlock knows. It's because he's tainted, soiled with his exposure to the filth he's spent eleven months trying to cleanse from the world.

He knows John has sincerely forgiven him, but that's a reflection of the purity of John's spirit, not of Sherlock's _deserving_ forgiveness.

Because I can't trust you not to hurt me, can't trust you, period, John thinks.

"Because we'll destroy each other," is John's answer. "Or drive each other mad. Remember what it was like when we lived together, Sherlock? How we made each other crazy, each wanting different things all the time?"

But Sherlock yearns for their life together. He looks away from John, gets up from the floor and retreats to the bed, sitting down on the edge. He leans his elbows on his knees, back bent.

At that moment the air conditioner hums into life.

"Oh, God, finally!" John exclaims. He leaps from the chair and runs around turning lights on and off, laughing like a child at Christmas.

He pulls up short, suddenly, and looks sideways at Sherlock, who is gazing at him like he wants to eat him. John looks away and almost furtively turns his laptop on.

"Say hello to Mycroft for me," Sherlock says, bitterly.

And John turns away.

* * *

It's not till the next day that the snow lets up enough to safely collect John. He's going to Baker Street, but only to get his stuff and find a new place. Sherlock hasn't looked at or talked to him since he contacted Mycroft. There's no way that they can share a place now, and Baker Street is, after all, Sherlock's, despite his Last Will and Testament.

Mycroft is glad to see him, and restrains himself from asking John about Sherlock, showing just how much he respects John's privacy. Things have changed since the days of bugging the flat and perpetual surveillance. John takes pity on him.

"He's slightly damaged, physically, though not permanently," John tells Sherlock's brother, "but psychologically – he's been through some pretty awful shit, I'd say. And emotionally – bad, I think." He tells Mycroft about Irene Adler. "I don't know how ...involved...their relationship was, but I think that woman would screw anybody up who got close to her."

"Yes," Mycroft agrees. "Though if they were that close, why would he leave her behind? Did he seem as though he missed her?"

"Oh, who knows, Mycroft! You know what he's like – mind flits from one thing to the next and he just switches obsessions." John is bitter about being an ex-obsession. Sherlock hadn't even tried to talk John out of leaving.

John tells Mycroft the little he knows about Sherlock's life after death. "He's a bit of a mess, Mycroft. I think it was more than he could cope with."

"He'll be better in London," Mycroft says.

"Yeah, well, just give me a couple of days to find somewhere else to be when he comes back. I'm a bit over him," John says, "it's good to know he's alive, but I think I've adapted to him being dead. I can't bear even the _thought_ of going back to the old lifestyle."

"I understand, John. Where did you think of living? Perhaps I can help."

Baker Street has been scrubbed up. There is no longer any dust, and the floors are clean. Sherlock's stuff still festoons the flat and the skull on the mantel looks reproachfully at John with its empty eyes as he collects his own possessions and packs them into boxes. It's a pitiful enough collection when he's finished, and he wonders what that says about him.

Mrs Hudson had been so pleased to see him, clinging to him, crying. "You're back, John, you're my John again,' and he'd told her how dreadfully sorry and ashamed he was for the way he had treated her. But she had told him not to be silly, that of course she understood, and wasn't it wonderful that Sherlock was alive? And then she was so disappointed that they wouldn't be living there together again.

His new flat is far enough away from his old stamping grounds to keep him from bumping into anyone he doesn't want to bump into. But he's been in touch with Molly, and he's sent Harry a long letter of apology. Greg hears he's back through the grapevine, and he makes contact with John, wringing his hand and saying how much he'd missed him, and welcome back, and John knows he's not just talking about the last two months.

None of them ask him about Sherlock and he doesn't volunteer anything, but somehow he understands that Sherlock is back in Baker Street, and that he is being unbearable.

But any time John's mind thinks about Sherlock he shuts it down. He's getting quite good at that during the day, when he's at the hospital. He's glad to be working again.

It's his sleeping mind that betrays him, as it always has. Sherlock visits every night, and he's not nightmarish at all. He's usually naked, and John awakens almost every morning with a pressing need which he can't bring himself to satisfy, because that way lies Sherlock, and madness as well. Self-control and cold water take care of his problem, but most nights, asleep, his mind has a mind of its own.

There's a song he hears at the coffee shop he goes to for lunch, and he sometimes catches himself singing it in his head. It's a sweet, intimate melody, with melancholic undertones, but it's an earworm, and eventually he goes and buys the album it's from. He doesn't really understand why it's gone so deep beneath his skin, until it plays in his head during one of his vivid dreams, and when he wakes up it's become absolutely obvious.

_I plant the kind of kiss  
That wouldn't wake a baby  
Upon the selfsame face  
That wouldn't let me sleep  
And the streets are singing with my feet  
And dawn gives me a shadow I know to be taller  
All down to you, my dear,  
Everything has changed.  
My sorry name has made it  
To graffiti  
I was looking for  
Someone to complete me.  
Not any more, dear,  
Everything has changed.  
And we made the moon our mirrorball  
The streets an empty stage  
The city sirens; violins  
Everything has changed._

John dreams of running, handcuffed, through moonlit London streets and wakes that morning with tears on his face and an ache that he will not allow himself to feel.

* * *

It's Friday and raining when John makes it back to his flat and sees a pile of mail addressed to him at Baker Street, which has been redirected to his new address. He throws them all on the kitchen table and makes tea and toast, and turns on the oil heater. Only when he's sitting on the rather lumpy sofa in his tiny living room does he open them. Some bills he's already paid, a request from a charity he donates to. And a letter with Russian stamps, in a hand he doesn't recognise. He opens the envelope and two things fall out, a grubby letter he can see was written by Sherlock – he'd recognise that writing anywhere – and a crisp note addressed to him. It's from Irene Adler.

'I found this letter addressed to you amongst some old possessions Sherlock left here when he returned to England. I thought I should forward it to you. Are you and he still dancing around each other? Because believe me, Dr Watson, you're the only one he'll dance _with_. Please give him my love, and look after him. He was very lost without you. Irene.'

John's skin prickles into goosebumps as he unfolds Sherlock's letter and smooths it out. It's very dirty and torn here and there.

'John,

I think of you and every time I am reminded of the fact that I don't have a heart, that caring is a disadvantage, that I don't have friends, and every time there you are - the one exception. Atypical. Anomalous.

I had not thought it possible that I could miss someone so much, but I miss you, sagittal suture to calcaneus cuboid, every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every – you get the idea, I'm sure. Never did I think to express myself in such clichéd terms, never to feel so sentimental, so saccharine. I despise myself for it as strongly as I know that if you were here in person I would _have_ to say it aloud to you.

How would you react? I still see you looking up at me as I fall – you'd be surprised how often that vision comes to me in dreams, but I can see it just as viscerally when I'm awake. I am always struck by the knowledge that came to me at that moment, of your true feelings for me (I wonder if you're even now aware of the nature of those feelings). My one comfort is that I know, utterly, that I did the right thing. I can't have you hurt, John, I wouldn't survive that. I was just as ignorant of my feelings till that moment. My realisation undid me just as surely as my 'death' undid you. I am so very sorry, John, that I put you through that, that I had to, that I still have to. But there's only one more disposal to carry out and then I can come to you. Home.

I will not send this. It will go the same way as all the others I've written to you – burnt or flushed, depending on how much access I have to fire and lavatories (god I miss those). Or buried. Even (I hear you laugh) chewed up and swallowed. I can't let my words to you be found by my enemies. They would be too powerful a weapon.

But I'm afraid that when I see you I'll be tongue-tied, dumbstruck. That my words will fall short of my feelings. You know I'm not a communicator. And I've had to watch every word for so long, because truth can be so perilous. I've forgotten how to speak as myself.

I can only trust that you, as always, will see me despite myself. That you'll understand me as generously as you always have. That I can still call you home. Because without you there is no home for me.

SH'

Oh God. John sits, shaking and angrier with himself than he's ever been because how could he? How could he do that to Sherlock? He can admit now, _too late_ he thinks furiously, that he was punishing Sherlock for leaving, when Sherlock had _explained_ why, when John, for chrissakes had already _forgiven_ him. You are such an arsehole, John Hamish fucking Watson. You say you can't trust Sherlock, when it's _you _that can't be trusted. Getting your back up because Sherlock went to Irene for help rather than you. You stupid jealous idiot, he told you himself –it didn't matter that _she _knew. _Hers_ was a life Sherlock was willing to endanger. Not yours. You should be glad Sherlock had someone to help him...no matter how that help was shown. And all the time, _this_ was what Sherlock was doing. Was feeling.

John rereads the letter. Reads that last paragraph and understands the immensity of his betrayal of Sherlock's trust.

He sits hunched down on that hideous sofa, that he hates like he hates this whole flat and beats himself up mentally for what he's done to the man he loves. Yes he'll admit it now. And then, unable to bear himself or the violent energy that's coursing through him, he's out of the flat, pounding the street, wet with rain and he should be cold because he's forgotten his jumper but he's so boiling mad with himself that he's hot and he doesn't really have a destination until he turns in to Baker Street and raps on the door. And Mrs Hudson opens it and John barely notices her as he charges up the stairs and throws the door open and looks in every room...and Sherlock's not there. He turns to Mrs Hudson, who has followed him up the stairs.

"Where is he?" he asks her.

"He's gone away, dear," she says, softly. "He was pretty bad, you know. Much worse than I've ever seen him. Said he couldn't think, poor love." She looks at him, reproachfully. "Said he needed to be alone."

And John knows exactly where he is.

* * *

Sherlock's not sure whether he's done the right thing, coming back to the lodge. It's not the sanctuary it used to be, not now that it's housed under its roof the scenes of his happiness and his misery. He came because he knew at Baker Street, with its constant reminders of John, he was going mad and he'd begun to think cocaine was a good solution to that. But he can't escape John, not here, either. The bed. The fireplace. That bloody rope, still coiled on the floor where John left it.

Of course it's not snowing anymore, though there've been the usual spring showers. It's of no account anyway, it's not like Sherlock wants to smell the crocuses pushing their green fingers up through the damp soil.

He's just sitting, his mind travelling its frustratingly circular path which always begins and ends with John, when his phone pings. He considers not responding – only Mycroft knows he's here and can be bothered to stay in touch with him, but he reads the message anyway.

'Sherlock.

I'm coming to find you.

If you don't want me to, leave the door closed.

John.'

His heart pounds and he can hear the rhythmic swish of his pulsing blood in his ears, would swear he can feel it throbbing in his arteries. He gets up, dizzily, and flings the door open. Outside it's wet and grey but he stands on the porch, holding onto the railing and waiting. He has no idea where John texted him from – he suddenly realises that he might be waiting out here for a while if John's only just now leaving London, but Sherlock finally has a purpose and he stands and waits with all his concentration.

And it's not even a full hour later that John walks into view, through the dripping trees and across the springflowered grass, straight to Sherlock and he stands at the bottom of the three small steps and looks up at Sherlock from beneath the dripping hood of his parka and says "I'm sorry. Forgive me."

And it's the perfect thing to say, because all Sherlock has to say is "of course," and suddenly there they are, back at the start and it's so natural for John to climb the stairs and take Sherlock's cold hand and hold it in his as they go inside and John closes the door and makes tea and feeds Sherlock who doesn't know when he last ate and it didn't matter then but it does now because _John._

Because John had subtracted himself from the equation that is John and Sherlock, that makes them a _them,_ and he is the most brilliant mathematician because he's recalculated that equation and added that fundamental figure to it; himself. And, amazingly, magician that he is, the them that they are now is so much greater than the sum of their parts has ever been.

And when they join themselves together in their bed, Sherlock's brain sees a snake swallowing its tail and the word infinity is in his mouth and he murmurs it against John's and John pulls back and whispers "what is it, love?" and Sherlock whispers "yes" and chases John's lips with his own.

"Everything has changed," breathes John into his ear as he closes his eyes to sleep, and Sherlock doesn't know the provenance of the words.

But he knows that everything has.


End file.
